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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> The blast occurred Aug. 8 during a test of a missile that used “isotope power sources” on an offshore platform in the Arkhangelsk region, close to the Arctic Circle, Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom said over the weekend. The Defense Ministry initially reported two were killed in the accident, which it said involved testing of a liquid-fueled missile engine. The ministry didn’t mention the nuclear element.

Maybe a stupid question but why would they be anywhere near the missile during the actual testing?

Or was this some kind of premature explosion while configuring or fueling it?

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From what I can gather reading Russian-language media, it was a sea platform-based static(?) fire of a hydrazine-fueled rocket with an RTG onboard (little of which makes sense to me, to be honest; might be a cover-up/lie by MoD, or it might be some experimental payload or vehicle). The fire supposedly happened after the test, when the crew approached it. Some people were thrown to the sea by the blast and proclaimed dead after an unsuccessful search and rescue operation. The "radiation spike" reported in the article was a minor increase in radon concentration, the link with the accident being unclear.

In any case it's probably not the infamous SSC-X-9/Burevestnik missile or we'd have seen at least some indication from independent monitoring sources already. (which are aplenty in the area, for obvious reasons). I'm waiting for radioisotope analysis confirming it was the nuclear thermal engine but there's still nothing, after 4 days.

It is strange indeed, given that this is not the first time lots of people die via missile explosion in Russia (see Nedelin catastrophe[1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe

There was explosion on the sea platform and men were thrown off it by the blast to the water. They were searching for them for a while before pronouncing them dead. This was reported in the Russian media.

Well if it is a nuclear thermal engine (aka "isotope power sources"), then the nuclear reactor IS the engine and there's not really anything to test without it.

> Maybe a stupid question but why would they be anywhere near the missile during the actual testing?

They are Russians https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3604355/

Very poor H&S regime unfortunately - its a bit grim but in this case you hope that the fatalities died quickly.

Possibly because it went up then turned and came back down on top of them some distance away.

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