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Russian Kursk Submarine to Be Raised in September
The lifting operation of the wrecked Russian nuclear submarine Kursk is set for September 15 and will last from eight to ten hours, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov told a Friday press conference here.
The whole project for raising the submarine will consist of two stages, said Klebanov, who heads a government commission investigating the tragedy.
The first or preparatory stage will start in July and end in mid-September, and the second is scheduled to start on September 10, which includes "raising the sub, fixing it to a barge and transporting it to a dry dock," the vice premier said.
Russia unexpectedly signed a contract on raising the sunken vessel with a Dutch company Mammoet on May 18, disbanding the originally expected Norwegian-U.S. company Halliburton at the very last moment.
Kursk, a state-of-the-art submarine of the Russian Northern Fleet, sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea last August during a naval exercises, killing all 118 crewmembers on board.
Presumed causes range from misfiring of torpedoes in its front compartment to a collision with a foreign submarine spying in the exercise area.
Klebanov said the cause of the catastrophe could be determined only after the Kursk was raised.
However, he stressed it "was already clear to the committee," that a torpedo, detonated in the first compartment of the submarine, was a factor in the development of the catastrophe.
"It is unclear what trigged the explosion, a problem with the torpedo itself or a collision of the sub with an external object," Klebanov said.
Russia's plan is to raise the 20,000-ton submarine with massive cables after the forward section is cut away to avoid detonation of its torpedoes.
However, Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov told reporters that the decision on how to handle the submarine's fore section would be made after evaluation of the condition of torpedoes in it.
"We are very worried by what we could find in the first compartment," he said, adding that unexploded torpedoes could remain there.
The compartment will be sectioned off from the rest of the Kursk in an inclined line.
"This is related to a certain technology and safety," Kuroyedov said.
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