Explosion in Torpedo Compartment Sinks "Kursk": Russian Duma Chairman

An accidental explosion in the torpedo compartment led to the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine "Kursk" last August, Russian Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznyov told the press in St. Petersburg on Friday.

The State Duma (lower house of the parliament) commission on inquiry of the cause of the Kursk disaster has found what the official report already said and raveled what caused the tragedy on earth, Seleznyov said.

"All experts are convinced that negligence or an accident led to an explosion in the Kursk's torpedo compartment and the sinking of the submarine," he said.

"Nobody intentionally bombed anything, neither our own people nor somebody else. There was no collision. Even those who used to advance other explanations are saying so," Seleznyov said.

"Still, there might be some technical details that the Duma commission may not have been let in on, or secrets that are discussed separately," he said.

On the same day, the Kursk Foundation ruled out possibility of incidents with the sub's reactors during the raising of it in September.

Carel Prins, Vice Chairman of the Kursk Foundation, said that he understands and shares the public concerns about the radiation situation at the wreck site in Barents Sea. However, he assured that "no incidents with the reactors will occur."

When the disaster took place, both reactors located in the sixth compartment were shut down. "And, according to our conclusion, they will not become active during the raising," he said.

But Vice Admiral Valery Dorogin, a member of the governmental probe committee into the catastrophe, said Friday that the true cause of the Kursk disaster will never be determined.

"We will never find out what killed the Kursk, just as we never found out the causes of the sinking of the Admiral Nakhimov, Inperatritsa Maria, and the ferry Estonia," which sank in the Soviet times, Dorogin told a press conference.

Nonetheless, he suggested three main versions of the catastrophe that occurred in the Barents Sea during a war game on August 12, 2000, all 118 crew on board the sub were killed.

The three possible causes include a collision, a blast, or an explosion brought about by a collision with a mine, he said. Technical failures have not been ruled out either, he added.






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