Moscow -- Residents of a Russian village near the site of a nuclear accident that killed seven people in Russia's far north last week were left confused on Tuesday by conflicting reports that they would be evacuated while work is carried out on the site. Several unidentified residents of Nynoksa, in Russia's Arkhangelsk region, told local news website 29.ru that they had been told they would have to leave the village for at least two hours, between 5 and 7 a.m. on Wednesday, and that a train would be provided for them.

The government of Severodvinsk, a city 25 miles away from Nynoksa, seemed to confirm the evacuation ordered to the state-run Interfax news agency.

"We have received a notification… about the planned activities of the military authorities. In this regard, residents of Nynoksa were asked to leave the territory of the village from August 14," officials were quoted by Interfax as saying.

However, the governor of the Arkhangelsk region, Igor Orlov, dismissed that report in a separate interview with Interfax as "complete nonsense," saying "no evacuation (is taking place)."

There was no consensus about a possible evacuation on social media channels frequented by both Nyonoksa and Severodvinsk residents. Concerned villagers post comments about "having heard" that they would need to leave, but not finding any official information about it.

Some of them said short-term evacuations were a regular occurrence in their communities, due to the work carried out at the military testing site near the village.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, Interfax quoted the local government of Severodvinsk as saying the military had canceled plans to conduct work on the testing grounds that would have necessitated the evacuation of Nyonoksa.

"We have information that the military canceled their activities tomorrow that required moving residents (out of the village)," an unidentified official at the Severodvinsk administration told the state-run news agency.

The nuclear accident

On Thursday last week an explosion at the testing ground near Nyonoksa left five scientists and two military personnel dead. Immediately after the blast, radiation levels in Severodvinsk spiked to up to 16 times the normal reading, according to the TASS state-run news agency.

In this grab taken from a footage provided by the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM press service, a Russian military band prepare to attend the funerals of five Russian nuclear engineers killed by a rocket explosion in Sarov, a closed city 230 miles east of Moscow, which has served as a base for Russia's nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s, Aug. 12, 2019. AP

Doctors that tended to people injured in the accident were to undergo additional medical examination. Representatives of the Arkhangelsk regional government told TASS on Tuesday that the doctors had requested the additional screening themselves, and it was not compulsory.

Russia's Defense Ministry initially claimed it was just a failed rocket engine test, but later Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear energy corporation, admitted the test involved a "radioisotope source of energy" -- or, as the company's spokespeople put it in comments to the Fontanka newspaper, "a nuclear battery."

U.S. intelligence officials believe it "likely" was a failed test of the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, known in Russia as the 9M730 Burevestnik. President Vladimir Putin boasted in a 2018 speech about a new, experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile with virtually unlimited range and the ability to penetrate U.S. missile defense systems.

Who should be worried?

Many Russian and U.S. military analysts have long expressed doubts about whether Skyfall exists, or whether the core technology involved is even viable. The U.S. experimented with similar technology decades ago, but abandoned it as the highly unstable, nuclear-powered missile engines weren't deemed to be worth the associated risks.

"This accident reminds us how hard this is and how complicated it is, and just because President Putin made a speech talking about six new scary things, it doesn't mean that they're going to actually happen or happen any time soon," Lynn Rusten, at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative organization, told CBS News on Tuesday.

Rusten said the people who should be most concerned by the explosion in northern Russia, "are the Russian citizens, who should be asking their government 'why are we doing this?'"

Commenting on the accident Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov would neither confirm nor deny suggestions about a test of a Skyfall missile.

He said the organization that carried out the test "gave information about it and explained the cause of the accident that occurred during testing and, unfortunately for all of us, led to the tragic death of our colleagues. I have nothing to add to that."

Conflicting reports from Russian officials about the accident over the weekend prompted speculation that the blast might have been more damaging than they were letting on. Some commentators compared the release of information about the explosion to what happened in the immediate wake of the Chernobyl disaster, when it took the authorities several weeks to reveal the truth.

CBSNews.com's Tucker Reals in London and CBS News' Christina Ruffini in Washington D.C. contributed to this report. </s> Image copyright Russian Defence Ministry website Image caption A cruise missile test-firing in Russia's Arctic north (file photo)

Five people were killed and three injured following a rocket explosion on an Arctic naval test range in Russia on Thursday, state nuclear company Rosatom confirmed.

Rosatom said the accident occurred during tests on a liquid propellant rocket engine.

The three injured staff members suffered serious burns in the accident.

Authorities had previously said that two people died and six were injured in the blast at the site in Nyonoksa.

The company told Russian media that its engineering and technical team had been working on the "isotope power source" for the propulsion system.

The Nyonoksa site carries out tests for virtually every missile system used by the Russian navy, including sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and anti-aircraft missiles.

Authorities in Severodvinsk, 47km (29 miles) east of Nyonoksa said that radiation levels shortly after the blast were higher than normal for about 40 minutes but returned to normal.

Locals have rushed to buy medical iodine, with pharmacies' stocks of iodine reported to be running out in the cities of Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk.

The rush for iodine was reported earlier by a news website for the Arkhangelsk region, 29.ru.

Low-level radiation spike

It also said medics who evacuated the injured at Nyonoksa wore chemical and nuclear protection suits.

There was a rush on iodine stocks during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, which sent a huge plume of radiation across Europe.

On Thursday the Severodvinsk administration reported a 40-minute spike in radiation, which reached 2 microsieverts per hour, then fell back to the normal 0.11 microsieverts. Both levels are too small to cause radiation sickness.

The administration has now deleted its statement online about the spike. The BBC asked officials there why, and they said "because this incident comes under the authority of the defence ministry".

The defence ministry insisted that "there have been no harmful chemicals released into the atmosphere, the radiation levels are normal".

Ammunition dump blaze

It is the second accident involving Russia's military this week.

On Monday, one person was killed and eight others were injured in a blaze at an ammunition dump in Siberia.

Flying munitions damaged a school and a kindergarten in the area. More than 9,500 people were evacuated. </s> In this grab taken from a footage provided by the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM press service, a Russian military band prepare to attend the funerals of five Russian nuclear engineers killed by a rocket explosion in Sarov, the closed city, located 370 kilometers (230 miles) east of Moscow, which has served as a base for Russia’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s, Russia, Monday, Aug. 12, 2019. Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear concern said Thursday’s explosion at a military testing range in northwestern Russia occurred while the engineers were testing a “nuclear isotope power source” for a rocket engine, a tragedy that fueled radiation fears and raised new questions about a secretive weapons program. (Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM via AP)

MOSCOW (AP) — Regional authorities in northwestern Russia say the Russian military has advised residents of a village near a navy testing range to move out following a rocket explosion that killed five nuclear engineers.

The Interfax news agency reported Tuesday that the regional administration based in Severodvinsk said a notice from the military recommended the evacuation due to unspecified activities at the test range.

Officials offered no further details about the advisory for the village of Nyonoksa.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has said the engineers were killed Thursday while they were testing a “nuclear isotope power source” for a rocket engine.

Local authorities in Severodvinsk, a city of 183,000, reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion, spooking residents. Officials insist it didn’t pose any health hazards. </s> MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of Russians attended the funerals Monday of five Russian nuclear engineers killed by an explosion as they tested a new rocket, a tragedy that fueled radiation fears and raised new questions about a secretive weapons program.

The engineers, who died Thursday, were laid to rest Monday in Sarov, which hosts Russia's main nuclear weapons research center, where they worked. Flags flew at half-staff in the closed city, located 370 kilometers (230 miles) east of Moscow, which has served as a base for Russia's nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s. The coffins were displayed at Sarov's main square before being driven to a cemetery.

The Defense Ministry initially said the explosion at the navy's testing range in Nyonoksa in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region killed two people and injured six others, but the state-controlled Rosatom nuclear concern acknowledged over the weekend that the blast also killed five of its workers and injured three others.

Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev praised the victims as "true heroes" and "a pride of our country."

"Our further work on new weapons that we will certainly complete will be the best tribute to them," Likhachev said during the funeral, according to Rosatom. "We will fulfill the Motherland's orders and fully protect its security."

Rosatom said the explosion occurred while the engineers were testing a "nuclear isotope power source" for a rocket engine. Local authorities in nearby Severodvinsk reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion, saying it lasted only about 30 minutes and didn't pose any health hazards.

Still, the statement from Severodvinsk's administration came just as the Defense Ministry insisted that no radiation had been released, a claim that drew comparisons to Soviet-era attempts to coverup catastrophes. Spooked residents rushed to buy iodide, which can help limit the damage from exposure to radiation.

Following the explosion, Russian authorities also closed part of Dvina Bay on the White Sea to shipping for a month, in what could be an attempt to prevent outsiders from seeing an operation to recover the missile debris.

Neither the Defense Ministry nor Rosatom mentioned the type of rocket that exploded during the test, saying only that it had liquid propellant.

But Rosatom's mention of a "nuclear isotope power source" led some Russian media to conclude it was the Burevestnik (Petrel), a nuclear-powered cruise missile first revealed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018 during his state-of-the nation address along with other doomsday weapons.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union pondered nuclear-powered missiles in the 1960s, but they abandoned those projects as too unstable and dangerous.

While presenting the new missile, Putin claimed it will have an unlimited range, allowing it to circle the globe unnoticed, bypassing the enemy's missile defense assets, to strike undetected. The president claimed the missile had successfully undergone the first tests, but observers were skeptical, arguing that such a weapon could be very difficult to handle and harmful to the environment.

Sergei Kirienko, Putin's deputy chief of staff who previously led Rosatom, said at the funeral that the victims were aware of the danger, but "took the risk, realizing that no one else would do the job better than them." He said they would be posthumously awarded with top medals. </s> MOSCOW — Regional authorities in northwestern Russia say the Russian military has advised residents of a village near a navy testing range to move out following a rocket explosion that killed five nuclear engineers.

The Interfax news agency reported Tuesday that the regional administration based in Severodvinsk said a notice from the military recommended the evacuation due to unspecified activities at the test range.

Officials offered no further details about the advisory for the village of Nyonoksa.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has said the engineers were killed Thursday while they were testing a “nuclear isotope power source” for a rocket engine.

Local authorities in Severodvinsk, a city of 183,000, reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion, spooking residents. Officials insist it didn’t pose any health hazards. </s> Thousands of Russians attended the funerals Monday of five Russian nuclear engineers killed by an explosion as they tested a new rocket engine, a tragedy that fueled radiation fears and raised new questions about a secretive weapons program.

The engineers, who died Thursday, were laid to rest Monday in Sarov, which hosts Russia's main nuclear weapons research center, where they worked. Flags flew at half-staff in the city, located 370 kilometers (230 miles) east of Moscow, which has served as a base for Russia's nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s. The coffins were displayed at Sarov's main square before being driven to a cemetery.

The Defense Ministry initially reported that the explosion at the navy's testing range near the village of Nyonoksa in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region killed two people and injured six others. The state-controlled Rosatom nuclear corporation then said over the weekend that the blast also killed five of its workers and injured three others. It's not clear what the final toll is.

The company said the victims were on a sea platform testing a rocket engine and were thrown into the sea by explosion.

Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev praised the victims as "true heroes" and "pride of our country."

"Our further work on new weapons that we will certainly complete will be the best tribute to them," Likhachev said during the funeral, according to Rosatom. "We will fulfill the Motherland's orders and fully protect its security."

Rosatom said the explosion occurred while the engineers were testing a "nuclear isotope power source" for a rocket engine. Local authorities in nearby Severodvinsk, a city of 183,000, reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion, but said it didn't pose any health hazards.

Still, the statement from Severodvinsk's administration came just as the Defense Ministry insisted that no radiation had been released, a claim that drew comparisons to Soviet-era attempts to cover up catastrophes. Spooked residents rushed to buy iodide, which can help limit the damage from exposure to radiation.

Following the explosion, Russian authorities also closed part of Dvina Bay on the White Sea to shipping for a month, in what could be an attempt to prevent outsiders from seeing an operation to recover the missile debris.

The Severodvinsk city administration said the radiation level rose to 2 microsieverts per hour for about 30 minutes on Thursday before returning to the area's natural level of 0.1 microsieverts per hour. Emergency officials issued a warning to all workers to stay indoors and close the windows.

The radiation level of 2 microsieverts per hour is only slightly higher than the natural background radiation, which could vary between 0.1 and 0.4 microsieverts per hour. It's lower than the cosmic radiation that plane passengers are exposed to on longer haul flights.

Russian environmental groups have urged the government to release details of the radioactive leak, but officials offered no further details.

Neither the Defense Ministry nor Rosatom mentioned the type of rocket that exploded during the test, saying only that it had liquid propellant.

But Rosatom's mention of a "nuclear isotope power source" led some Russian media to conclude it was the Burevestnik (Petrel), a nuclear-powered cruise missile first revealed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018 during his state-of-the nation address along with other doomsday weapons.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union pondered nuclear-powered missiles in the 1960s, but they abandoned those projects as too unstable and dangerous.

While presenting the new missile, Putin claimed it will have an unlimited range, allowing it to circle the globe unnoticed, bypassing the enemy's missile defense assets to strike undetected. The president claimed the missile had successfully undergone the first tests, but observers were skeptical, arguing that such a weapon could be very difficult to handle and harmful to the environment.

Some reports suggested that previous tests of the Burevestnik missile had been conducted on the barren Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya and the Kapustin Yar testing range in southern Russia before they were moved to Nyonoksa. Moving the tests from unpopulated areas to a range close to a big city may be a reflection of the military's increased confidence in the new weapon.

The Sarov nuclear center director, Valentin Kostyukov, said that the victims tried but failed to prevent the explosion. "We saw that they were trying to regain control over the situation," he said.

Sergei Kirienko, Putin's deputy chief of staff who previously led Rosatom, said at the funeral that the victims were aware of the danger, but "took the risk, realizing that no one else would do the job better than them." He said they would be posthumously awarded with top medals. </s> Russia's nuclear agency on Saturday said an explosion at an Arctic missile testing site had killed five of its staff after the military had put the toll at two.

Earlier, the authorities in a nearby city said the accident had caused a spike in radiation levels but the military denied this.

The accident on Thursday happened during testing of a liquid propellant rocket engine at a missile test site in the far northern Arkhangelsk region.

In a statement, Rosatom said the accident killed five of its staff and injured three, who suffered burns and other injuries.

Rosatom said its staff were providing engineering and technical support for the "isotope power source" of the missile engine.

The military had not described the accident as involving nuclear fuel.

The authorities have released few details of the accident at the Nyonoksa test site on the White Sea, used for testing missiles used in nuclear submarines and ships since the Soviet era.

The defence ministry initially said that six defence ministry employees and a developer were injured while two specialists died of their wounds.

The authorities in Severodvinsk, a city around 30 kilometres (19 miles) away from the test site, said on their website that automatic radiation detection sensors in the city "recorded a brief rise in radiation levels" on Thursday morning.

The post was later taken down.

An official responsible for civil defence, Valentin Magomedov, told TASS state news agency on Thursday that radiation levels rose to 2.0 microsieverts per hour for half an hour from 11:50 am (0850 GMT), before falling sharply.

He said this exceeded the permitted limit of 0.6 microsieverts, TASS reported.

Russian online media published unattributed video that journalists said showed a line of ambulances speeding through Moscow to take the injured to a centre that specialises in the treatment of radiation victims.

Rosatom said that the injured were being treated at a "specialised medical centre."

An expert from Moscow's Institute for Nuclear Research, Boris Zhuikov, told RBK independent news site that isotope power sources are mainly used in spacecraft and are not usually dangerous for people working with them.

"If they are damaged, people who are nearby could be hurt. Isotope sources use various types of fuel: plutonium, promethium or cerium," Zhuikov said.

The radioactivity levels involved are "absolutely not comparable with those during serious accidents at reactors," he added.

The news of the accident prompted residents of Severodvinsk to rush to pharmacies on Thursday to stock up on iodine, which can be taken to stop the thyroid gland absorbing radiation.

"People started to panic. Within a matter of an hour all the iodine and iodine-containing drugs were sold out," pharmacist Yelena Varinskaya told AFP.

The Soviet Union saw the world's worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, when the authorities sought to cover up the seriousness of the disaster. </s> Thousands of people on Monday attended a funeral for five Russian nuclear engineers killed by an explosion during tests of a new rocket at the country's main nuclear weapons test center.

The deadly explosion occurred on Thursday during a test of a liquid-propellant jet engine near the small town of Nyonoksa in Russia's northwestern Arkhangelsk region.

Initial reports said the explosion killed two people and injured a further six. Russia's Rosatom nuclear agency later acknowledged that the blast also killed five of its workers and injured three others.

Rosatom said the explosion occurred while the engineers were testing "a nuclear isotope power source" for a rocket. It named the five as Alexei Vyushin, Evgeny Koratayev, Vyacheslav Lipshev, Sergei Pichugin and Vladislav Yanovsky.

A Russian state commission was investigating what went wrong, according to Valentin Kostyukov, head of the nuclear center, who called the five nuclear experts "national heroes."

Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev praised the victims as "true heroes" and "a pride of our country."

"Our further work on new weapons that we will certainly complete will be the best tribute to them," Likhachev said during the funeral, according to Rosatom. "We will fulfill the Motherland's orders and fully protect its security."

Sergei Kirienko, Russian President Vladimir Putin's deputy chief of staff, said the five would be posthumously awarded with top medals.

Russian officials at the test center where the scientists had worked said the accident had caused a two-fold rise in radiation levels that had only lasted an hour. The site is used to test intercontinental ballistic missiles that are used on nuclear submarines.

"One of the lines [of research and development] is the creation of sources of thermal or electric energy using radioactive materials, including fissile materials and radioisotope materials," said Vyacheslav Solovyev, an official at the test site.

Local authorities in nearby Severodvinsk reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion.

 The Soviet Union was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster when, in 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine released radioactive contamination for nine days.

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here. </s> MOSCOW: Russia’s nuclear agency said Saturday an explosion during missile testing in the Arctic left five of its staff dead and involved radioactive isotopes after a nearby city reported a spike in radiation levels.

Rosatom said the force of explosion on Thursday threw several of its staff from a testing platform into the sea.

The military had not initially said that the accident involved nuclear equipment, but said that radiation levels were normal afterwards.

Nevertheless, officials in the nearby city of Severodvinsk reported that radiation levels briefly increased after the accident.

The incident occurred in the far northern Arkhangelsk region during testing of a liquid propellant jet engine when an explosion sparked a fire, killing two, the defence ministry said in a brief statement.

It was not immediately clear whether those two deaths were included in the five that Rosatom had reported.

Russian state news agencies quoted a defence ministry source as saying both defence ministry and Rosatom employees were killed.

Rosatom said its staff were providing engineering and technical support for the “isotope power source” of a missile being tested.

The missile was being tested on a platform at sea when its fuel caught fire and triggered an explosion, Rosatom said in a statement quoted on Russian television.

Several staff were thrown into the sea by the force of the blast, the nuclear agency said, adding that it only announced the deaths when there was no longer any hope that the employees had survived.

The accident left three more of its staff with burns and other injuries, Rosatom said.

It said staff knew of the “potential risk” of the test.

The authorities initially released few details of the accident at the Nyonoksa test site on the White Sea, used for testing missiles deployed in nuclear submarines and ships since the Soviet era.

The defence ministry said six defence ministry employees and a developer were injured, while two “specialists” died of their wounds.

The authorities in Severodvinsk, 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the test site, said on their website on Thursday that automatic radiation detection sensors in the city “recorded a brief rise in radiation levels” around noon that day.

The post was later taken down and the defence ministry said that radiation levels were normal after the accident.

A Severodvinsk official responsible for civil defence, Valentin Magomedov, told TASS state news agency that radiation levels rose to 2.0 microsieverts per hour for half an hour from 11:50 am (0850 GMT), before falling sharply.

He said this exceeded the permitted limit of 0.6 microsieverts, TASS reported.

Greenpeace Russia published a letter from officials at a Moscow nuclear research centre giving the same figure, but saying higher radiation levels lasted for an hour. The officials said this did not present any significant risk to public health.

Russian online media published an unattributed video which journalists said showed a line of ambulances speeding through Moscow to take the injured to a centre that specialises in the treatment of radiation victims.

Rosatom said that the injured were being treated at a “specialised medical centre”.

An expert from Moscow’s Institute for Nuclear Research, Boris Zhuikov, told RBK independent news site that isotope power sources are not usually dangerous for people working with them.

“If they are damaged, people who are nearby could be hurt. Isotope sources use various types of fuel: plutonium, promethium or cerium,” Zhuikov said.

The radioactivity levels involved are “absolutely not comparable with those during serious accidents at reactors,” he added.

News of the accident prompted residents of Severodvinsk to rush to pharmacies to stock up on iodine, which can be taken to prevent the thyroid gland absorbing radiation.

“People started to panic. Within a matter of an hour all the iodine and iodine-containing drugs were sold out,” pharmacist Yelena Varinskaya told AFP.

The Soviet Union saw the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, when the authorities sought to cover up the seriousness of the disaster.
According to Interfax, the governor of Arkhangelsk Oblast dismisses as "complete nonsense" the advice by authorities in Severodvinsk to residents of Nyonoksa to evacuate on August 14. This follows the accidental explosion on Thursday of what is speculated to be a nuclear-powered missile. Russian nuclear agency Rosatom says the failed test involved a "nuclear isotope power source" for a liquid-propelled rocket engine.