The 14 sailors who died when a fire erupted aboard a top-secret Russian nuclear submarine last week prevented a “planetary catastrophe,” a top naval officer said at their funeral, accor…

Russia’s worst post-Soviet naval disaster also occurred in the Barents Sea, when 118 crew died on the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank after an explosion in August 2000. The Kyshtym disaster was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site in Russia for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant of the Soviet Union. Two Russia-based nuclear monitoring stations that monitor radioactive particles in the atmosphere mysteriously went quiet after an August 8 explosion at a Russian missile testing facility Russia’s worst post-Soviet naval disaster occurred early in Putin’s presidency, in August 2000, when 118 crew died on the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank in … The 14 sailors who died when a fire erupted aboard a top-secret Russian nuclear submarine last week prevented a “planetary catastrophe,” a top naval officer said at their funeral…