March 23, 2004
And We Were Worried About Just A Missile...
A few days ago I briefly touched on the events surrounding the damaging of the nose cone on a Trident missile as it was being removed from the USS Georgia. Now I thought that was a bad situation, even though there was never a risk of detonation or even a radiation leak.
But the Russians have taken this all to a new level. Forget damaging a nuclear missile, the Russians are warning that The Pyotr Veliky is in such condition that it may explode. The ship carries two reactors and as many as 10 nuclear missiles (bearing in mind that the Russians were never as big on nuclear safety as we are to begin with).
If this thing decides to go "boom" there could potentially be quite a bit of fallout, both politically and physically.
The Russians need to make a real, arms length assessment of the ship, if for no other reason than for the PR value gained in doing so. If the ship is truly safe, they should have no problem demostrating such. If it is unsafe, it would give them an opportunity to remedy the situation before they lose their Northern Fleet flagship.
Just as the American people deserve a report on the events surrounding the USS Georgia incident, the Russian people deserve an explaination as to the true state of The Pyotr Veliky.
A representative government, which is what Moscow still claims to be, owes its people no less.
Posted by Chris at March 23, 2004 08:54 PM | TrackBack | Linked by:Chris, I hate to tell you, but nuke-powered ships can't go "boom." At least, not if you mean a nuclear explosion "boom."
The two biggest threats with any nuclear generator are
a)coolant failure, leading to major meltdown (on land AKA "The China Syndrome"), or
b)escape of radioactive coolant into the atmosphere. Three Mile Island was a very mild example of the latter.
Good catch, Casey. You're right and I did intend to make it clear that I was thinking along the lines of your option "B", conventional explosion with a release of radiation. I certainly don't expect that Vladivostock will get wiped off the map completely!
Posted by: Chris at March 25, 2004 05:22 PMPlease do not use my bandwidth and storage for solicitations. Any solicitations are subject to deletion
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