Two Russian nuclear monitoring stations—specifically
designed to detect radiation— “went silent” in the days following an explosion of what many believe was a nuclear-powered
missile earlier this month during tests at a remote base, a nuclear
official said in an email Sunday.
Lassina Zerbo, the head of
the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, told The
Wall Street Journal in an email that two days after the explosion that the
monitoring stations in Kirov and Dubna suffered “communication and network
issues.”
There have been reports that Russia has not been fully
transparent about what occurred at a military base in the far northern
Arkhangelsk region. The initial report from the country’s nuclear agency said
that five workers were killed in a rocket engine explosion. The Guardian
reported that radiation levels in Severodvinsk, a nearby city, increased 20
times above normal for about a half hour after the explosion.
It has been reported that residents in the area have been
stocking up on iodine, which helps reduce the effects of radiation exposure.
Two days later, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear agency Rosatom
acknowledged that the explosion occurred on an offshore platform during tests
of a “nuclear isotope power source,” and that it killed five nuclear engineers
and injured three others. It’s still not clear whether those casualties were in
addition to the earlier dead and injured.
H.I. Sutton, a contributor to Forbes, reported that there has been speculation about what
exactly Russia was testing at the time of the explosion. One theory, according
to his analysis, is that Moscow was testing a “mega-torpedo” nearby, which
is reportedly 30 times larger than submarine torpedoes considered
“heavyweight.”
The
report said, “Launched from a large submarine, potentially from under the
protection of the arctic ice cap, it would virtually have unlimited range and
Russia claims that it will run so deep that it cannot realistically be
countered with existing weapons.”
President Trump took to Twitter and said the U.S. is
"learning" from the missile explosion and said the U.S. has more
advanced technology but did not elaborate.