What Happened on the White Sea near Nyonoksa, Russia?

Something strange happened near Nyonoksa, Russia. There was an explosion. There was a radiation spike. At least five Russian nuclear personnel were killed. Information is dribbling out. The Russians are slowly fessing up to what happened. However, details are very, very elusive and there is an enormous amount of speculation.

Nyonoksa, Russia is in the Archangelsk Oblast (district) near Severodinsk and Archangels. It is located off the east shore of the White Sea and in the general vicinity of a lot of Russian naval bases. The accident or incident didn't happen at the town itself though, but rather at a site nearby. If the Russians are to be believed, it was out on the White Sea itself.

On August 8th, an accident took place. The accident was supposedly due to rocket fuel catching fire and at least five people have so far have died. The reports initially just stated there was an accident with a rocket. This happens rockets having far, far more energy stored in them than even a 747 and when precautions are not sufficiently taken, people die. It even happens here in the US: ask the Challenger astronauts or Virgin Galactic employees. It would have been a tragedy rather than a mystery.  This is not a strictly Russian thing.

But then...

Radiation counters spiked in in Nyonoksa, Russia and elsewhere. The radiation levels spiked to 20x the norm. And then returned to normal within days. Even possibly a day. The Norwegians reported no spike in Norway until several days later, but it was a spike of radioactive iodine. Previous radioative iodine spikes have been attributed to medical manufacturing in Russia in the past.

Therein lies the mystery.

Had this been a case where a nuclear weapon or whatnot had had a subcritical explosion, the fallout would have contaminated the area and the radiation would be persistent and VERY detectable with the cloud it would have generated in Norway with far more isotopes than merely the glowy-version of iodine. Yet it did not. Whatever caused the spike did so with a gas or something very transiently and easily dispersible.

The Moscow initially denied there was no radiation spike. They originally stated there was an explosion with a liquid fuel rocket engine. Now they are saying the stating the 7 killed were working on iso tope power sources' for new weapon systems. Yet, they still deny the radiation release: the city of Nyonoksa stated there was a radiation spike though and there was a run on iodine in town (iodine can protect the thyroid from radiation damage).  The Russians later announced and then cancelled an evacuation of Nyonoksa.

This has increased the speculation as to what happened. The Warzone (and others) have suggested there was an explosion related to the Burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile the Russians have been working on: NATO calls the weapon 'Skyfall' which I find to be way more awesome, btw. This uses an exposed nuclear reactor to heat air into providing thrust. This was explored by the US in Project Pluto back in the 1960s/1970s. A premature or accidental test run would fit the profile for the radiation spike, but would not be a match for the description of an explosion: the engine exhaust can be radioactive even if no radioactive material from the engine is lost. The workers being present when the engine started and unexpectedly would also fit why they died and what they were doing.

However...

If the workers were killed in an accidental test, it would be a massive case of negligence. Worse than that, actually. Heads ought to be rolling so much that Putin could field a bowling team using the severed heads as bowling balls.

Burevestnik has been an air launched weapon. Russia has been testing it over in Siberia. Archangelsk's area is more naval. The location seems rather strange for the Burevestnik then unless they were working on it to integrate with naval assets. Possible, but strangely premature. The weapon is still in very early testing and the flight regime is still being expanded.   Adding the capability to, say, the Tu-144 Backfires, would be really dumb at this point. Likewise attempting to do the same with a sub or surface ship is also stupid: with money tight in the Russian defense budget, getting the missile working ought to come first and the Russians are far from stupid in that regard. This should have greatly decreased the possibility of the Burevestnik being the source of the radiation.  

But!

The engineers killed were related to the nuclear industry in Russia.  the Russians have copped to the explosion being related to their nuclear weapons development.  The US gov has stated they think the explosion was related to the Burevestnik.  In a weird and blatant twist, the Russians have been disabling radiation sensors in the area.  And doctors reported Cesium-137 in patients.

Other possibilities - unlikely ones - were a nuclear sub had to do an emergency reactor venting after an explosion.  Yet another possibility was the explosion and the radiation leak were from difference incidents.   Some have thrown out some crazy ideas based on the fact the Russians called the test as using a isotopic power source: a deliciously obfuscating phrase that covers nuclear reactors, RTGs and several other oddities.

The weirdness about the very transient nature of the radioactive cloud and Russia's obfuscations leave a lot of unknowns.  So, while, far less of a mystery than two weeks ago, the real nature of what happened continues to remain murky.

What caused the radiation spike? Why did it clear so quickly? What is going on on the shores of the White Sea?   We suspect, but don't know.

The Hunt for the Red Pluto-ber

Russia has been working on a number of weapons to circumvent the American ballistic missile defense system. They apparently have more faith in the capability than we do. Or less in their ballistic missiles. Either way, the Russians have come up with some pretty crazy things to deal with these defenses. Almost all of their solutions, are as expected, to delivery nuclear weapons.

Two of the craziest of them were the nuclear armed strategic torpedo/unmanned underwater vehicle called the Poseidon (originally called Status-6) and the other was the Burevestnik, a nuclear powered cruise missile. Yes, nuclear powered. We'll get to that. The Poseidon is meant to be fired off and have it swim for thousands of miles to its target, such as a port city, and then either lie in wait or detonate on arrival. The Russians, true to form, have been talking about using it on US aircraft carrier battle groups. The other weapon is even crazier.

The Burevestnik (Storm Petrol, a type of sea bird), as stated, is a nuclear powered nuclear carrying cruise missile. It does carry a nuclear warhead. It also uses a nuclear reactor as a ramjet where it heats the air passing through to make it expand faster creating thrust. The US considered the design in the 1960s in Project Pluto. It was considered too insane to actually use and was abandoned. The Russians decided it was not insane because it gives them effectively, if they can make it work, unlimited range. The nuclear reaction in the reactor could keep the aircraft in the air for years. The downside is that it spews chunks of the reactor everywhere. That was actually a design feature in the original Project Pluto, btw, laying waste to the country side through supersonic shockwaves and leaving radioactive fallout all over the place. Nice, huh? The point though is that the missile could be fired south over Kazakhstan and then go all the way south over Antarctica before coming all the way up to hit the US in say, Florida.

The Russians have been testing this like crazy. Between November 2017 and February 2018, the Russians reportedly fired off four missiles. They all 'crashed.' From the sounds of it, these may have been launcher tests rather than tests of the missile itself. The times and ranges of the flight are pretty off if the reactor was actually on. However, if this was a case where a mass simulator (an inert body like aluminum) was being used with the rocket intended to launch the cruise missile up to ramjet speeds, then those tests make sense. After all, the russians did release a video of one of the cruise missiles followed by chase planes. You are not going to do that if it was a 22 second flight.

However! It may be on the 4th test, they attempted to launch a live reactor carrying cruise missile. The Warzone is reporting the Russians are sending ships to recover the missile from the Barents Sea. If this was a mass simulator, who cares? However, if it is a real missile, then the US and others might want to recover it. They sent a ship to recover a Mig and a sukhoi lost during the Russian flights off their carrier in support of their campaign in Syria for fear of what the US (or others) might find out from the wrecks salvaged from the seafloor. This would be worth about a million times more.

And the US has the capability to retrieve the missile wreck if they want to. That's in part what the USS Jimmy Carter, a heavily modified Seawolf class, is for.

So, we may have a race for whoever recovers the missile first.

You might call it the Hunt for the Red Pluto-ber.

Russian Doomsday Weapons Shown off

Project Burevestnik, the Russian Project Pluto 

Project Poseidon, the Russian nuclear armed UUV

Russia has released new footage of all six of the advanced weapon systems that President Vladimir Putin revealed in an impassioned speech in March 2018. The goal seems to be to prove that there are physical prototypes of each one, but questions remain about how close any of the systems, especially the Poseidon long-range nuclear-armed torpedo and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered and armed cruise missile, are to actually entering service.

The Russian Ministry of Defense posted the clips on YouTube on July 19, 2018. In contrast to previous imagery the country has shown of the weapons involved, in many cases, censors blurred or otherwise obscured certain components, as well as identifying markings on the systems. The new imagery also comes after a controversial summit between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump that reportedly included discussions about existing and future arms control agreements.

link.

Russians leaked information on the hypersonic missile to the West and the FSB raided the research facilities.