Russian submarine sinks in Barents Sea

MOSCOW -- A mothballed Russian submarine being towed to a scrapyard sank in a gale in the Barents Sea on Saturday, killing nine of the 10 crew, the defense minister said.

The accident raised concerns of environmental damage in a busy fishing area and further dented the navy's prestige three years after the submarine Kursk sank in the same area with 118 men aboard.

A howling storm ripped the pontoons off the K-159 sub as it was being towed to a plant in Polarnye, some 800 miles north of Moscow above the Arctic Circle, where it was to be dismantled.

The navy said one sailor was rescued and the bodies of two others were pulled from the 50-degree water. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said it was unlikely the seven others would be rescued.

Ivanov said the commander of the submarine division that included the K-159 was suspended, and the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office said Navy officials were being charged with violating navigation rules.

"In addition to objective factors -- sea waves -- there were subjective one: technical standards of towing were ignored during the voyage," Ivanov said.

Hatch left open

The hatch atop the sub's conning tower had been left open, Ivanov said. That likely hastened the sub's sinking and gave the crew little chance of survival.

The prosecutor's office said officers "didn't show enough resolution in carrying out rescue operations," the Interfax news agency reported.

The agency, citing unnamed navy officials, said a second derelict submarine was being towed in the area and apparently confused rescuers. That submarine reached port safely, Interfax said.

The two nuclear reactors of the 40-year-old K-159 were shut down when it was decommissioned in 1989. Radiation levels reportedly remained normal after it sank.

Although the navy insisted that the K-159's nuclear reactors posed no environmental hazard, environmentalists warned of a possible radiation leak that could contaminate the busy fishing area.

"The risks are very high," said Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian navy captain who heads the St. Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group.

Nikitin said that the uranium fuel loaded into the submarine's reactors about 30 years ago was far more radioactive and dangerous than a fresher load would have been.

Reactors still aboard

He said the navy should have removed the crumbing, leaky submarine's reactors before it was towed away.

"They have chosen the cheapest and the worst option," said Nikitin, whose report on nuclear risks posed by the Russian navy led to his arrest in 1996 and 11-month imprisonment on treason charges. He was acquitted in 1999.

Retired Adm. Eduard Baltin recalled that the K-159 was already leaking when it made its last mission in 1983. He said on Echo of Moscow radio that the navy shouldn't have placed the crew on the submarine. "It was like putting them in a barrel full of holes," he said.

The tour was apparently intended to boost the prestige of the Russian navy, badly hurt by the Kursk sinking in 2000.

The Kursk was raised from the Barents Sea floor in October 2001. Ivanov said the K-159 also would be raised.

The K-159 entered service in 1963, intended for attacking enemy ships with conventional or low-yield nuclear torpedoes.

A submarine of the same type, the K-8, caught fire and sank in April 1970 in the Bay of Biscay during naval maneuvers, killing 52.