The Russian Boats Are Burning by James Dunnigan

The Russian Boats Are Burning
by James Dunnigan
May 11, 2015

On April 7th, for the second time since 2013, a Russian Oscar class nuclear submarine caught fire while undergoing refurbishment. This time it was in a shipyard on the north (arctic) coast. The one in late 2013 was in a Pacific coast shipyard. In both cases the fire was put out quickly and there were no weapons on board. The Russians are pretty strict about r reactors being shut down and weapons removed before the shipyard work begins. Thus there was no radiation leak or damage to the sub’s reactor during either fire. In both cases the fire was started when tools or welding ignited some rubber insulation and spread to other flammable material. The 2013 fire took five hours to put out and killed 14 people. The 2015 fire did not kill anyone.
After the 2013 fire the government called for improved supervision of work on submarines to prevent incidents like this. That was the fourth submarine fire since 2006 and the latest one makes it five. Fires don’t always happen in shipyards but that is where a sub is most vulnerable to such accidents. Russia has always had problems getting competent management in its naval shipyards and that became worse after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the more capable shipyard managers could find better paying jobs in the civilian sector. This was unfortunate, because these yards were getting a lot of tricky refurb and upgrade jobs for aging Cold War era nukes.

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/The-Russian-Boats-Are-Burning-5-11-2015.asp