Kursk rises from its ocean grave

MURMANSK - Salvage teams yesterday started lifting the wreck of the Kursk nuclear submarine from the Arctic seabed, where it has lain since it sank last year with 118 Russian crew members on board.

"The Kursk has risen from the ocean floor," said Larissa van Seumeren, spokeswoman for the Dutch company Mammoet, contracted by Moscow to lift the Kursk.

"We are going to be lifting for the next 10 hours."

The Kursk rose off the ocean floor more than three hours after the salvage crews began trying to winch its stern from the grip of the muddy Barents Sea floor.

The lifting pressure was then transferred slowly forward in a delicate operation aimed at retrieving the submarine intact.

"The vessel is completely loose now and free from mud," said van Seumeren. The nerve-racking task of freeing the giant submarine from the mud before hauling it to the surface, a journey of 100m, started after divers installed radiation monitors at the wreck and made last-minute checks.

The Kursk, one of Russia's most advanced submarines, plunged to the seabed after two explosions ripped through its bow on August 12 last year.

Once raised, the Kursk will be strapped to the Giant 4 lifting barge and taken to dry-dock at the town of Roslyakovo outside Murmansk, where experts will seek to determine the cause of the disaster and cut out its arsenal of cruise missiles.

The wreck will then be sealed and towed to the nearby shipyard at Snezhnogorsk, where its nuclear fuel will be unloaded and the vessel dismantled.

- REUTERS

Feature: the Kursk disaster