Last week a mysterious explosion occurred off the coast of Northern Russia near Severodvinsk in what experts have said as attempts by Putin to produce nuclear powered cruise missile to beat the US missile defences.

Nuclear explosion kills seven

The Russian Federal Nuclear Centre through scientific director Vyacheslav Solovyov confirmed that the explosion that went off on Saturday involved radioactive material and it killed seven people. He indicated that at the time of the explosion scientists were working on small sized nuclear energy sources using radioactive material at the Nyonoksa military range. The nuclear agency Rosatom has also confirmed that the accident happened while conducting testing for isotope power in liquid propulsion system.

According to US intelligence officials and experts the explosion was a result of a failed test of a nuclear propel cruise missile that Putin has hailed as the centrepiece of Russia’s arms race with the US.

Experts have indicated that the information provided by Russian authorities is vague and the facility might have been testing the weapon that Putin announced in March last year. Putin had indicated that the country was developing a cruise powered missile that had unlimited range that could ferry a nuclear weapon to any place across the globe. US intelligence officials are indicating that the explosion involved a prototype that NATO refers to as SSC-X-9 skyfall.

Russia building an undetectable missile

Recent reports from the Pentagon indicate that the possibility of a nuclear propelled cruise missile from Russia is potentially a new kind of threat. Such missiles are launched into the air and can navigate an unpredictable path at low altitudes undetected. As a result they are virtually unstoppable to the US antimissile detections systems in California and Alaska that have the potential of intercepting ballistic missiles in space that are traveling in a predictable path.

It seems that President Putin’s early test for the missile seemed to have failed even before the explosion. Information from Russia regarding what happened in one of its leading missile test sites seems to be changing in the past few days as body count has increased.