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Originally Posted by Commander Wallace
Great pictures and narrative, as usual.  The " November " attack Sub was part of the new construction of " Hotel " Ballistic missile and " Echo " guided missile submarine classes of submarines that all came into service about the same time as the November. These are of course the NATO designations for the classes.
You had mentioned that the The November is slated to become a museum. Given that the Project 627 November was the former Soviet Union's first nuclear powered submarines and the subsequent nuclear accidents in their history on submarines, how safe is it to be aboard one while touring it ? The most notable example of a serious reactor accident was aboard The Hotel class K19 on July 4th, 1961 in which all 7 members of it's engineering crew and a divisional officer died within a month of the accident. 15 more crew members died within 2 years from the after exposure. Although the nuclear fuel has undoubtedly been removed, is there any danger of radioactive contamination ?
Thanks for posting the Pictures and narrative. |
The HEN's 1st generation soviet submarines were rushed into service sometimes on trails with builders still on board, the real issue with these boats was lack of backups and also lack of adequate safety equipment, plus poorly manufactured parts.
On paper the November class would out class Nautilus in almost every aspect but the reality is much different corners were cut and this caused a lot of delays and issues with the boats.
The Project 627 and 627A (one as a Project 645) (Kit in Russian) were the first to enter the service of the Soviet navy, followed very quickly by the Project 658 Hotel class (K-19 being the first) these were the first generation of Nuclear powered Ballistic missile submarines (not the first submarines to carry ballistic missiles that belongs to the Project AV611 or Zulu IV class submarines)
K19 was later bought by the Billionaire Vladimir Romanov although she is now scrapped part of her remains as to where no one knows, but Vladimir Romanov served on K19 during his service in the Soviet Navy.
As a side note it was only discovered that the project AV611 or Zulu IV existed as a ballistic missile platform after the USS Grenadier along with several P2V ASW aircraft pinned down one for nine hours forcing it to come to the surface where naturally it was photographed, the USS Grenadier would be given a Unit Citation for their work.
Back on track the last of the trio the Echo class would see some dubious action K108 came to grief after a collision with the USS Tautog, K22 Collided with USS Vogue the latter was towed to Crete, K45 & K56 collided with trawlers, K1 Grounded while submerged near Cuba, the list goes on just about every single Echo class boat suffered some accident.
The last of the class commissioned in 1966 they were all withdrawn in the 1990's.
Later models of submarines the 2nd generation on wards were safer and had built in safety systems and suffered fewer accidents, tragically the Oscar II K141 Kursk would buck the trend on that one.
As for the nuclear contamination problems now the fuels (which were likely removed in the 90's) have gone along with the entire reactor compartment the risk of radiation contamination just walking through or around the submarine is negligible, you can see the reactor compartment has been cut out and a plug inserted they did the same with the Redoubtable in France its as safe as walking through a diesel boat i have not had any issues walking through nuclear submarines.
A lot of the contamination from nuclear reactors like what we saw at Chernobyl for example comes from Thorium 232 Caesium 137 and Iodine 131 which have half lives in decades not centuries or millennia (239Pu has a half life of 24,110 years found in commercial reactors)
But reactors like the type installed on submarines use little amounts or Uranium no where near the size of a power plant to give you an idea the nuclear reactor on board a submarine is about the size of a compact car but yet emits between 25,000-50,000Shp
This is how close you can get to a nuclear reactor that is live although in shut down mode it still emits radiation.
OK650B by
Blair Shaw, on Flickr
This is a Russian OK650-B which is the mainstay reactor for most of the Russian fleet powers everything from the Typhoon and Oscars down to Victor's and Akula's currently being phased out with the new build submarines like Borei and Yasen moving to more advanced pressurised water reactors.