2008 Russian submarine K-152 Nerpa accident
An Akula-class submarine similar to K-152 Nerpa
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| Date | 8 November 2008 |
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| Time | 08:30 local time |
| Location | Peter the Great Gulf, Sea of Japan, off the coast of Primorski Krai |
| Casualties | |
| 20 killed | |
| 41 injured | |
| Accident occurred on board the Russian submarine K-152 Nerpa | |
The K-152 Nerpa accident was an incident that occurred aboard the Russian submarine K-152 Nerpa on 8 November 2008, which resulted in the deaths of 20 people and injuries to 41 more. The deaths and injuries were caused by an unsanctioned release of fire suppressant gas inside the submarine during a submerged test run during the vessel's sea trials in the Sea of Japan. The gas caused victims to die of asphyxiation or suffer frostbite in their lungs. The incident was the worst Russian submarine disaster since the sinking of the Kursk in 2000. Three of the dead were military personnel and the rest were civilians from the Vostok, Zvezda, Era, and Amur shipbuilding yards who were members of the acceptance team.
At the time of the accident, Nerpa was undergoing sea trials at the Russian Pacific Fleet's test range in Peter the Great Gulf, an inlet of the Sea of Japan adjoining the coast of Russia's Primorski Krai province. The vessel had not yet been accepted by the Russian Navy but was undergoing plant tests under the supervision of a team from the Amursky Ship Building Plant. For this reason, it had a much larger than usual complement aboard, totalling 208 people, 81 military personnel and 127 civilian engineers from the shipyards responsible for building and outfitting the submarine.
The accident occurred at 8:30 PM local time on 8 November 2008, during the submarine's first underwater test run. The submarine's fire extinguishing system was triggered, sealing two forward compartments and filling them with freon R-114B2 gas (Dibromotetrafluoroethane, known as khladon in Russian). The gas, a hydrobromofluorocarbon refrigerant, is used in the Russian Navy's LOKh (lodochnaya obyemnaya khimischeskaya – "submarine volumetric chemical") fire suppressant system. Each compartment of a Russian submarine contains a LOKh station from which freon can be delivered into that or adjacent compartments. Freon displaces oxygen, enabling it to extinguish fires rapidly in enclosed spaces. In high concentrations, it can cause , which progresses by stages into excitation, mental confusion, lethargy, and ultimately asphyxiation.
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