As always gleaning information from Russian mishaps is difficult, but here is what we know. At least five are dead at a military unit in Russia’s northwestern Arkhangelsk region, where a series of explosions have rippled through the Russian military sites in recent days., beginning two days ago on August 8th.
The official statement should be taken with an ocean’s worth of salt:
“As a result of the accident at a military testing range in the Arkhangelsk region involving a liquid-fuel jet engine, five Rosatom employees died,” the state-run nuclear company said on August 10, raising the number of fatalities from the two reported a day earlier.
According to the Russian defense ministry (not known as a transparent bastion of truth) the fire broke out after a reaction engine exploded on August 8 “when testing a liquid propulsion system.”
What is a liquid propulsion system? A jet engine? A car engine? I am not trying to make light of the deaths, not at all. I am emphasizing the worthlessness of the released information.
Still. We get to the very concerning part, the all-too-believable-part.
Regional authorities, as opposed to the Russian Defense Ministry, said the explosion and fire took place near the town of Nyonoksa, where a navy ballistic-missile test range for nuclear submarines is located.
Back to the Defense Ministry to receive assurances that “no harmful chemicals released into the atmosphere,” the Defense Ministry said, adding that “radiation levels are normal.”
Except:
The nearby city of Severodvinsk, 30 kilometers away, said a “brief spike” in radiation levels was registered after the blast.
“Sensors in Severodvinsk recorded a short-term increase in radiation levels. Currently, the levels have returned to normal,” according to a statement on the city’s website, citing readings between 11:50 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. local time.
The city’s website? The same city in which mass panic would ensue if the website noted catastrophic levels of radiation floated in their midst? This again is speculation but …
Here is the problem, radiation levels do not just “spike” for an hour, at least none that I have never heard of. Nor does radiation magically go away quickly. Much of it may leave the area on its way to spread out elsewhere, but it doesn’t go away.
We now move to a more reliable source, and this is scary. Greenpeace states that radiation levels had risen 20 times above normal in the city. Note that statement does not say that those levels have come down, nor does it state that the normal radiation levels in the city meet normal levels elsewhere. They leave those points open ended. Pharmacies in the city report being sold out of iodine. The article doesn’t say who purchased the iodine so quickly, one is left to wonder if the military moved in to buy it up.
More troubling, the blast is just one of three that has rippled through the facility in recent days. Your guess is as good as mine as to how a series like that could possibly happen. One is left to wonder if the nuclear danger resulted from the first explosion, and then an intentional series followed, ones that could be used as models for scientists to examine – from afar – and agree that there is no nuclear threat, not knowing they are not being shown the original explosion. That is truly a guess.
One American-scientist noted that the pattern seems to follow the Soviet government’s attempt to slow walk the news out of Chernobyl – though I am not stating that the blast matches the level of danger brought about by Chernobyl.
Also peculiar, the Russian investigative agency said possible violations at the site concerning the handling of weapons may have played a role in the explosions, which prompted a state of emergency in the surrounding region.
Make of that statement what you will. I am speculating again, but a “state of emergency” in the Arctic doesn’t sound consistent with engine mishandlings, and “handling of weapons” generally doesn’t spark a series of explosions.
None of this makes any sense, except that local authorities recorded a giant spike in radiation at the time and place of one of the explosions, and that the news flow out of Russia matches that which one would expect from a serious accident.
I will follow up.
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Peace, y’all.
Jason
Sorry for the changing font, y’all. I do not cut/paste paragraphs except for specific block quotes, though I will do cut/past parts of sentences – especially to get the spelling right, and then re-word it. Apparently, with these two articles researched, any sentence with any cut/paste originally within it altered the font for that sentence or sentences.
I will work with the site managers to fix the problem. I also appreciate your patience with it, as you all know we do not plagiarize, not the least bit bc we are self-absorbed enough to convince ourselves we can write it better anyway. 🙂
Maybe the,”NEW”, super missiles that Russia is building, that go so fast, they are unstoppable, are using liquid fuels instead of solid fuels … a problematic situation, as the liquid fuels depend on a huge amount of oxygen to operate, think giant tanks of LOX, liquid oxygen, strapped to our space rockets … the advantage to using liquid fuel is it can be controlled, from full speed to shutoff, using computer controlled valves … solid fuels are like a rocket in a fireworks show, once lit, it burns until the fuel is used up, so the cue is just enough fuel to provide thrust to the target/s …
Unlikely a wing mounted missile would be liquid fuel, ground launched missiles would work like the big boys, need connections to feed and bleed systems, those on the big launches blow those hoses off at launch time …
Our space launches going at huge speed shortly after launch, work like the inter continental nuclear bomb missiles … the peel away rocket motors on the sides are solid fuel boosters to get the heavy load started like the small rocket engines tied to those large military planes that need to get into the air on shorter runways …
These sneaky announcements from Russia ARE, annoying, hardly any info, so no one knows how dangerous a situation we ALL are in …
Spot on, and I nearly put that in myself. I just figured I had done enough speculation for one article, but you are fantastic for putting it in the comments. YES they have bragged about their missile that are too fast and high for anything to do anything about it, and would MOST likely be the ones they are “testing.” Thank you so much for your valuable contribution.
Hey. Let’s get back to facts instead of speculation. There was a blast and a run on Iodine. I have seen this reported elsewhere. Solid and liquid fueled rockets would not on their own produce radiation. A payload mb but this was reported as an engine test. Lets stick to the facts kids. Until more is known don’t act like Trump here.
Sounds like they didn’t learn anything from the Hindenburg disaster of a hundred years past. To wit, never make the thing you want to fly blow up before you want it to.