Fire Extinguished On World's Only Nuclear-Powered Cargo Ship

by Lidia Kelly (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday that emergency workers had put out a fire on a Soviet-era nuclear-powered cargo-icebreaker ship and the state company which runs the vessel said there had been no casualties and no threat to the security of the reactor.

The fire broke out on Sunday in one of the cabins of the Soviet-made Sevmorput ship, which is currently at dock in the northern Russian city of Murmansk, the emergency ministry said.

The fire, which at its peak covered an area of about 30 square meters (323 square feet), was put out with no casualties, the ministry said.

"The fire was quickly extinguished," Atomflot, which owns the vessel, said in a statement. "There were no injuries."

"There was no threat to crucial support systems or to the reactor plant," Atomflot said.

Atomflot runs Russia's fleet of nuclear icebreakers and is a unit of the Rosatom state nuclear corporation.

The Murmansk region, in Russia's northwest, shares borders with Finland and Norway, as well as with the Barents and White seas.

The ship, which entered service in 1988 and underwent an extensive upgrade a decade ago, is Russia's only nuclear-powered icebreaking transport ship, according to Rosatom.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Gleb Stolaryov in Tbilisi and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Kirsten Donovan)