• After 20-hour battle, Russia douses fire on nuclear sub

    Firefighters work to extinguish fire at the Roslyakovo shipyard in the northern Russian region of Murmansk.

    By msnbc.com news services

    Updated at 6:45 a.m. ET: Russia said on Friday it had doused a raging blaze aboard a nuclear submarine after nearly a full day and night, by partially submerging the vessel after battling the flames with water from helicopters and tug boats.

    There was no radiation leak and crew inside the submarine were monitoring the stricken vessel's nuclear reactors which had been shut down, Russian officials said.

    At least nine people were injured fighting the flames which witnesses quoted by local media said rose 30 feet above the Yekaterinburg submarine at the navy ship yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia.

    "The fire on the submarine has been totally extinguished," Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu told officials leading the firefighting effort, more than twenty hours after the blaze began Thursday afternoon at 7:20 a.m. ET.

    His remarks were reported by Interfax news agency.

    Updated 4:53 a.m. ET: An unspecified number of crew remain inside a burning nuclear submarine that caught fire on Thursday at an Arctic shipyard, Russia's military said Friday.

    Seven other crew were sent to hospitals after inhaling toxic fumes, the country's defense ministry said.

    State-owned news agency RIA reported military proescutor spokesman Alexander Grigoriev saying: "Some of [the crew] are still on the submarine. They consist of those servicemen who are ensuring the safety of of the nuclear submarine."

    It said there has been no radiation leak from the fire on board the submarine Yekaterinburg, which was in drydock.

    Fire brigades were still struggling to put out the blaze on Friday at 12 p.m. local time (4 a.m. ET).

    The military said the fire had begun on wooden scaffolding and then engulfed the submarine's rubber-coated outer hull. It said the sub's nuclear reactor had been shut down and its 16 nuclear-tipped missiles had been unloaded before the repairs.

    The ministry's statement left it unclear whether the crew members inside the vessel were trapped there or ordered to stay inside.

    Emergency workers said efforts to partially sink the submarine at the dock had failed to fully extinguish the fire.

    A defense ministry spokesman said on Thursday the nuclear reactor had been shut down and all weapons had been removed from the Yekaterinburg, which launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea at a firing range thousands of miles away in Kamchatka as recently as July.

    The Yekaterinburg is a Delta-IV-class nuclear-powered submarine that normally carries 16 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was built in 1984.

    Most modern submarines' outer hulls are covered with rubber to make them less noisy and more difficult for an enemy to detect.

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     The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

  • Fire on Russian nuclear submarine; reactor shut down

    TV21 via Reuters

    Firefighters work to extinguish the blaze on a nuclear-powered submarine at a shipyard in Murmansk, Russia, on Thursday.

    By Reuters

    MOSCOW - Russia tried to submerge a burning nuclear submarine at a navy shipyard on Thursday after battling for hours with helicopters and tug boats to bring the raging blaze under control.

    There was no radiation leak, authorities said.

    Television pictures showed a giant plume of smoke above the yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia as over 100 firemen struggled to douse flames which witnesses said rose 30 feet above the stricken vessel.

    Emergency workers said efforts to partially sink the submarine at the dock had failed to fully extinguish the fire. A defense ministry spokesman quoted by state news agency RIA said the blaze, which began at 1220 GMT (7:20 a.m. ET), was under control more than eight hours later.

    Russia said the nuclear reactor had been shut down and all weapons had been removed from the Yekaterinburg, which launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Barents Sea at a firing range thousands of miles away in Kamchatka as recently as July.

    "Radiation levels are normal," a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry said. "No one was injured."

    After hours of trying to put out the flames, officials decided to partially submerge the hull of the 18,200-tonne submarine at the Roslyakovo dock, one of the main dockyards of Russia's northern fleet 900 miles north of Moscow.

    Local media reports were vague, but the blaze was believed to have started when wooden scaffolding caught fire during welding repairs to the submarine, which had been hoisted into a dry dock.

    The submarine can carry 16 ballistic missiles, each with four warheads. Its nuclear reactor was not damaged in the fire and Russian navy submarine reactors are built to withstand enormous shocks and high temperatures.

    "The reactor has been shut down and does not pose any danger," Interfax news agency quoted a source at navy headquarters as saying.

    Russia's worst post-Soviet submarine disaster occurred in August 2000 when the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea killing all 118 crewmen aboard.

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