https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/k...dent-jt3njt7nv
Kremlin ‘tried to hide nuclear arms accident’
Four Russian monitoring stations designed to detect radioactivity fell silent after an explosion thought to have involved a nuclear-powered engine for a missile, raising suspicions of an attempt by Moscow to blur the truth.
The Dubna and Kirov stations stopped transmitting on August 10, two days after
the blast on a platform in the White Sea in northern Russia that killed five people and caused
a peak in radiation levels. Two other stations, the Bilibino and Zalesovo, fell silent on August 13.
The stations are part of a global network of atmospheric sensors overseen by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation that pick up radioactive particles from explosions.
Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the organisation, said that it was “addressing with station operators technical problems experienced at two neighbouring stations”.
Dubna and Kirov are the closest sensors to the area of the blast in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region, which
President Trump said involved a test of the Skyfall or Burevestnik (Storm Petrel), a cruise missile lauded last year by President Putin as one of Russia’s new generation of weapons........
Experts were sceptical about the malfunctions at the monitoring sites. “It is a very odd coincidence that these stations stopped sending data shortly after the Aug 8 incident,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told
The Wall Street Journal........