VLADIVOSTOK (Sputnik) – A Russian nuclear submarine docked at a scrapping plant in Kamchatka’s Vilyuchinsk in the Far East caught fire.
Pictures of billowing smoke from the area are being posted on social networks and local media. The pictures show the nose of the vessel in smoke.
В Вилючинске горит подлодка pic.twitter.com/H7K6HTgLnW
— Sigizmund Serov (@SigizmundSerov) 29 апреля 2016 г.
The fire broke out on Friday during the hull dismantlement, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a press release.
“Before being sent to the scrapping plant, all weapon systems and nuclear elements were removed. There is no threat to the ecology.”
The fire at the plant has been localized and there "was neither technologic nor ecological threat", the scrapping plant's representative told RIA Novosti.
"The fire was inside [the plant], that is why extinction lingered. We have wetted it down, there is no open fire. There was fumigation, but now everything is in order."
The Project-949 Krasnoyarsk submarine was built in 1983 and decommissioned in 1998.
