VLADIVOSTOK. March 11 (Interfax-AVN) - The WMD protection service of the Pacific Fleet has resumed research of the territory in the vicinity of the Dunai locality where a blast of the K-431 submarine's reactor occurred in 1985, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet headquarters told Interfax-Military News Agency on Monday.
The expedition is to map polluted areas and work out charts of the site that would facilitate decontamination of the terrain in case of necessity. The pollution level does not exceed corresponding standards at present and no urgent measures are required.
The spokesman added that both the residents of the area and local mass media had raised the problem of contamination of the road section not far from the Chazhma bay where the accident occurred. The active zones of the submarine's two powerplants were being recharged when the radiochemical blast occurred. It happened on August 10, 1985, when the pressure of the reactor lid was being tested; the submarine was moored at the repair plat of the Pacific Fleet not far from the Dunai locality. Eight officers and two sailors were killed on the spot. Due to the great level of radiation contamination their bodies were cremated and buried under a 15-meter concrete cover on the territory of the plant.
The documents determining ways of eliminating results of the accident read that two blasts of a spontaneous explosive chemical reaction at 11:55 Moscow time (0755 GMT) on August 10, 1985. Some five mili-curie of the reaction fission products were ejected into the atmosphere, which caused radioactive contamination of 30 % of the plant's territory and two square kilometers of the forest.
Approximately 2,00 men were engaged in liquidating the results of the accident. Four burial trenches were built on the territory of the shore technical base.
The spokesman noted that experts of the WMD protection service had detected point contaminated areas on the section of the road the previous year; these might have been generated in the course of the operation in 1985 when the contaminated soil was transported to the burial trenches. In accordance with the corresponding order of the Pacific Fleet commander, a special commission of the fleet's experts was set up for radiometric screening of the area last summer; the commission was to cooperate with a representative of the nuclear and radioactive threat inspection of the Defense Ministry.
The results of the screening were discussed at the interdepartmental session on problems concerning lowering of the radiological contamination level on the site of the accident. Among the participants in the session were representatives of the Natural Resources Committee of the Maritime territory and those of the DalRao federal state unitary enterprise of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry. Work on decontamination of the areas was launched in the wake of the session, but the project was suspended in winter. Now it has been resumed, the spokesman said.