Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 19, 2001, p. 7
On evening of October 18 Vice-President of the Mammoeth company Ian van Seimeren must have left the Giant-4 barge, which would have been an obvious sign that the work of driving the pontoons for a tandem “barge – nuclear-powered submarine” were without excesses. The first pontoon was driven on Thursday morning, whereas the work of driving the second pontoon should have been completed by the evening of October 18. If the “venting” of both vessels is a success and a required immersion of the link “barge – nuclear-powered submarine – pontoons” is achieved, the only thing left would be to check everything and launch the procedure of docking the Kursk into a PD-50 floating dock.
The docking is only possible on high water. The tide in the Kolsky Gulf is at its maximal mark at 16.00. The first attempt would obviously be me already on Saturday, whereas Sunday would be a spare day.
The background radiation in the site where the work of raising the submarine was completed and where it had sunk is normal. As Ingar Amudsen, assistant advisor of the Norwegian state department for radiation shielding, and his colleague Bjorn Lind, who both had spent two weeks in the site of the Kursk’s salvage, say, “the Barents Sea is absolutely harmless for fishing.”
