When he announced the missile in 2018, Putin suggested that tests of the propulsion system had occurred the previous year, but there was no indication of whether this had been in flight or on the ground and under what conditions.
Soon after Putin’s 2018 announcement, the
Norwegian-based environmental group Bellona suggested that a radiation spike in the Arctic that same winter was caused by the missile’s open-air-cooled reactor core.
Later in 2018, a U.S. intelligence report described the loss at sea of a Russian nuclear-powered missile during a 2017 test. The report added that Russia was expected to embark on a search and recovery mission to try to lift the missile’s wreckage from the seabed.
More dramatically, in 2019, an explosion occurred aboard a barge in the White Sea, outside Nenoksa,
killing five Rosatom scientists. It also
led to a radiation spike in the Russian city of Severodvinsk, as you can read more about
. The
explosion has been blamed on a reactor from a Burevestnik recovered from the sea, likely the one that was lost in 2017.
While the details of these accidents remain murky, they point to a significant problem in using nuclear propulsion for a missile or any other vehicle flying in the atmosphere.
It should be recalled that, in the case of SLAM, the nuclear ramjet had no shielding to contain dangerous radiation, a requirement driven by the need for the powerplant to be small enough to fit inside the missile. The SLAM’s exhaust plume also contained unspent fissile material that would have contaminated any area, enemy-controlled or not, that it passed over on its way to the target.
While the Burevestnik has already been likened to a ‘
tiny flying Chernobyl’
, it’s important to remember that we still don’t know how it functions.
Nevertheless, provided it does indeed use nuclear propulsion, as claimed, there exists the risk of accidents.
“
The testing [of the Burevestnik] carries a risk of accidents and local radioactive emissions,” Norway’s Intelligence Service (NIS) stated in a threat assessment report published last year.
This is
especially the case during an unarmed test, when the missile necessarily has to come down to the surface, impacting either land or water. Here, especially, there remain a lot of questions about how the missile is tested.
It’s possible that the missile came down in waters around Novaya Zemlya, in either the Barents Sea or the Kara Sea. According to the
Barents Observer and other sources, there are several ships in this area, on both sides of the Matochkin Strait, which might be involved in a recovery operation.
These ships include Rosatom’s special-purpose vessel
Rossita, on the eastern coast of the Kola Peninsula. This vessel was noted making port calls in Novaya Zemlya after previous presumed Burevestnik tests. The
Rossita is equipped to transport spent nuclear fuel and other hazardous radioactive material.
