Ukraine’s ecology minister has warned of the danger of a “second Chernobyl” if Russian-led separatists pursue plans to flood a coal mine where a small nuclear bomb was detonated in 1979.

Ostap Semerak called for international help to stop a potential “radiation catastrophe” as the United States also expressed concern over the mine and a key water facility in eastern Ukraine that has temporarily shut down after five workers were shot.

Soviet specialists conducted the underground explosion to free trapped gas at the YunKom mine in Yenakieve, 55km northeast of what is now the militant stronghold of Donetsk, and pumps have kept the blast zone relatively dry ever since.

Separatist officials insist that pumping and special monitoring are no longer necessary, however, citing local and Russian experts who say radioactivity levels in the mine are normal, and that flooding it would pose no threat of contamination to the Donbas region’s water table.

“What the militants are playing at is nothing other than terrorism and political blackmail,” Mr Semerak told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“Our joint task with international partners is to prevent a second Chernobyl in Donbas,” he said, referring to the atomic power station north of Kiev that exploded in April 1986, showering much of northern Europe with radiation.

Drinking water

Earlier this week US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter: “Plans by Russian proxies to flood the abandoned YunKom coal mine... could threaten drinking water of thousands of Ukrainians in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine. We urge Russia and its proxy authorities to act responsibly.”

Four years of fighting in Donbas have killed more than 10,300 people, displaced 1.6 million and ravaged an industrial region of mines, metal works and chemical plants, creating the potential for a long legacy of environmental problems.

In a 2017 report on the environmental impact of the war, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said that YunKom “poses a singular threat”.

“Any present destabilisation of the mine via flooding could release up to 500 cubic metres of radiation-contaminated mine waters into the ground water table,” the OSCE said.

The conflict frequently disrupts water supplies through Soviet-built canals and pipes that criss-cross the front line, and which workers take considerable risks to maintain and repair after damage by shelling.

Under fire

The Donetsk water filtration plant, which sits right on the frontline, shut down again on Wednesday after five employees were wounded when their bus came under fire the previous day.

Hundreds of thousands of people in government and militia-held territory receive water from the plant, which is often struck by shells despite the presence there of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals.

“The chlorine is being washed out so it doesn’t stay in the pipes. They are halting the pumping station,” said Alexander Yevdokimov, acting head of the Donbas Water company. “It doesn’t mean we have shut it down forever, but we simply need security guarantees for our employees.”

Ms Nauert said the US urged “all forces to withdraw from positions around the Donetsk filtration station and other critical civilian infrastructure”. </s> Thousands of people on Monday attended a funeral for five Russian nuclear engineers killed by an explosion during tests of a new rocket at the country's main nuclear weapons test center.

The deadly explosion occurred on Thursday during a test of a liquid-propellant jet engine near the small town of Nyonoksa in Russia's northwestern Arkhangelsk region.

Initial reports said the explosion killed two people and injured a further six. Russia's Rosatom nuclear agency later acknowledged that the blast also killed five of its workers and injured three others.

Rosatom said the explosion occurred while the engineers were testing "a nuclear isotope power source" for a rocket. It named the five as Alexei Vyushin, Evgeny Koratayev, Vyacheslav Lipshev, Sergei Pichugin and Vladislav Yanovsky.

A Russian state commission was investigating what went wrong, according to Valentin Kostyukov, head of the nuclear center, who called the five nuclear experts "national heroes."

Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev praised the victims as "true heroes" and "a pride of our country."

"Our further work on new weapons that we will certainly complete will be the best tribute to them," Likhachev said during the funeral, according to Rosatom. "We will fulfill the Motherland's orders and fully protect its security."

Sergei Kirienko, Russian President Vladimir Putin's deputy chief of staff, said the five would be posthumously awarded with top medals.

Russian officials at the test center where the scientists had worked said the accident had caused a two-fold rise in radiation levels that had only lasted an hour. The site is used to test intercontinental ballistic missiles that are used on nuclear submarines.

"One of the lines [of research and development] is the creation of sources of thermal or electric energy using radioactive materials, including fissile materials and radioisotope materials," said Vyacheslav Solovyev, an official at the test site.

Local authorities in nearby Severodvinsk reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion.

 The Soviet Union was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster when, in 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine released radioactive contamination for nine days.

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here. </s> The mysterious explosion in northern Russia on Thursday that left at least five people dead and unleashed a radiation spike may have involved a secret, new nuclear-powered cruise missile touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year as a weapon that would render NATO's American-led missile defense system "useless."

The incident on Thursday took place at a military shooting range in Nyonoksa in the far northern Arkhangelsk region. Russia's Defense Ministry initially said the blast killed two people and injured six, but the state-controlled nuclear agency Rosatom later disclosed that the explosion killed five of its workers and injured three others. It wasn't immediately clear if Rosatom's figures were in addition to the casualties announced by the Defense Ministry or if it included the ministry's earlier numbers.

Rosatom said the explosion occurred while engineers were testing "a nuclear isotope power source" for a rocket. Local authorities in nearby Severodvinsk reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion, swiftly publishing a statement on a local administration website -- but then later removing it without explanation.

Data cited by Greenpeace from Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations showed radiation levels rose 20 times above the normal level in the city, which is about 18 miles from the testing site.

While the Russian military has remained quiet about what type of rocket may have been involved in the test, the research institute that employed five of the scientists that died said Sunday night a small nuclear reactor had exploded during the experiment in the White Sea.

Vyacheslav Solovyov, the scientific director of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, said in a video statement to a local newspaper that the agency was working on a number of experimental technologies, including studying "small-scale sources of energy with the use of fissile materials." He said similar work is taking place in the United States, but did not disclose how much material had been involved in the incident Thursday, according to the Guardian.

“We are now trying to understand, we are working closely with a government commission, analyzing the entire chain of events to assess the scale of the accident and to understand its causes,” he said.

Two U.S.-based nuclear experts told Reuters on Friday that a liquid rocket propellant explosion would not release radiation, leading to speculation the nuclear-powered cruise missile was involved. U.S. intelligence officials told the New York Times they believe the blast involved a prototype of a missile Russia calls the 9M730 Buresvestnik. The NATO alliance has designated it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.

During his 2018 state of the nation address, Putin unveiled the missile, along with other new weapons that he said made NATO's U.S.-led missile defense system "useless."

The Russian leader claimed the nuclear-powered cruise missile had an unlimited range, flew at a high speed and was capable of maneuverability that would allow it to pierce any missile defense. While Putin boasted of the ability to strike long-range targets, two U.S. officials briefed on Moscow's military capabilities told Fox News at the time the weapon was not operational yet and still in its “nascent" stage.

“The nuclear-powered cruise missile Putin bragged about has actually crashed a few times,” during recent testing in the Arctic, one official said. “Think about the environmental impact of that,” the official added. Both agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

RUSSIAN PHARMACIES REPORT RISE IN SALES OF IODINE NEAR SITE OF MYSTERIOUS MILITARY EXPLOSION

Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis tweeted Friday the "working hypothesis" was the incident was related to the 9M730 Burevestnik.

Lewis also shared an image on Twitter from Planet Labs that showed the Serebryanka, a nuclear fuel carrier, near the missile test site. He told Reuters his team examined Automatic Identification System signals from ships located off the coast, which showed the Serebryanka was located inside an “exclusion zone” set up off the coast a month before the apparent failed test.

“What’s important is that the Serebryanka is inside that exclusion zone. It’s there. It’s inside the ocean perimeter that they set up. It’s not there by accident,” he told the news agency. “I think they were probably there to pick up a propulsion unit off the ocean floor.”

He also told Reuters that the U.S. tried to develop a nuclear-powered missile engine in the 1950s, but it let off radiation that was "a health hazard to anyone underneath it."

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The explosion last week created a run on iodine in nearby cities. Iodine prevents the thyroid gland from absorbing radiation, which can be dispersed in the air during a nuclear accident. Shipping in the Dvinsk Bay on the White Sea has also been shut down for a month after the accident, according to the Wall Street Journal.

On Monday, thousands of people attended the burial of the five Russian nuclear engineers who were killed in the blast. The engineers were laid to rest in the city of Sarov that hosts Russia's main nuclear weapons research center.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> Background radiation in the northern Russian city of Severodvinsk briefly rose up to 16 times normal levels following an explosion at a nuclear missile test site last week, Russian authorities said Tuesday.

The accident took place at an Arctic military facility on the coast of the White Sea on Thursday when a missile being tested on an offshore platform exploded, killing five.

Russian nuclear agency Rosatom said said its staff were providing engineering and technical support for the “isotope power source” of a missile engine.

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“The Arkhangelsk territorial system of radiation control registered gamma radiation levels 4-16 times above the background rate of the ambient dose equivalent for the given territory,” Russian meteorological service Rosgidromet said in a statement carried by news agency TASS.

Rosgidromet said the levels were higher at six out of eight of its stations in Severodvinsk and that levels returned to normal after 2.5 hours.

One of the sensors registered a level of 1.78 microsieverts per hour, well above the local average but far below dangerous levels.

Russia’s nuclear agency chief also confirmed that the scientists who were killed were developing “new weapons” and vowed to continue testing despite the explosion.

Severodvinsk is located 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Nyonoksa missile test site.

Earlier statements by local authorities regarding elevated radiation levels were denied by the Russian military.

Severodvinsk civil defense chief Valentin Magomedov pegged local radiation levels at three times acceptable levels for a period of a half hour following the explosion.

Leonid Bolshov of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Nuclear Safety Institute told TASS that residents of the Arkhangelsk Region were not in any danger following in the explosion.

The explosion fueled speculation regarding Russia’s pursuit of a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a concept examined and abandoned by Washington during the height of the Cold War.

Unnamed intelligence sources told The New York Times that they believed the explosion involved a prototype missile known in NATO circles as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, which could theoretically reach anywhere on the planet. Russian President Vladimir Putin showed off an animation of such a system last year.

If successfully deployed, such a weapon would pose a strategic threat to the United States because it would be capable of bypassing current American missile defenses. However, there is currently no indication that the Russians have managed to succeed where their geopolitical rivals have failed.

US President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States is learning “much” from the deadly blast but that “we have similar, though more advanced, technology.”

Experts challenged Trump’s assertion of a program to develop US nuclear-powered missiles </s> Moscow -- Residents of a Russian village near the site of a nuclear accident that killed seven people in Russia's far north last week were left confused on Tuesday by conflicting reports that they would be evacuated while work is carried out on the site. Several unidentified residents of Nynoksa, in Russia's Arkhangelsk region, told local news website 29.ru that they had been told they would have to leave the village for at least two hours, between 5 and 7 a.m. on Wednesday, and that a train would be provided for them.

The government of Severodvinsk, a city 25 miles away from Nynoksa, seemed to confirm the evacuation ordered to the state-run Interfax news agency.

"We have received a notification… about the planned activities of the military authorities. In this regard, residents of Nynoksa were asked to leave the territory of the village from August 14," officials were quoted by Interfax as saying.

However, the governor of the Arkhangelsk region, Igor Orlov, dismissed that report in a separate interview with Interfax as "complete nonsense," saying "no evacuation (is taking place)."

There was no consensus about a possible evacuation on social media channels frequented by both Nyonoksa and Severodvinsk residents. Concerned villagers post comments about "having heard" that they would need to leave, but not finding any official information about it.

Some of them said short-term evacuations were a regular occurrence in their communities, due to the work carried out at the military testing site near the village.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, Interfax quoted the local government of Severodvinsk as saying the military had canceled plans to conduct work on the testing grounds that would have necessitated the evacuation of Nyonoksa.

"We have information that the military canceled their activities tomorrow that required moving residents (out of the village)," an unidentified official at the Severodvinsk administration told the state-run news agency.

The nuclear accident

On Thursday last week an explosion at the testing ground near Nyonoksa left five scientists and two military personnel dead. Immediately after the blast, radiation levels in Severodvinsk spiked to up to 16 times the normal reading, according to the TASS state-run news agency.

In this grab taken from a footage provided by the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM press service, a Russian military band prepare to attend the funerals of five Russian nuclear engineers killed by a rocket explosion in Sarov, a closed city 230 miles east of Moscow, which has served as a base for Russia's nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s, Aug. 12, 2019. AP

Doctors that tended to people injured in the accident were to undergo additional medical examination. Representatives of the Arkhangelsk regional government told TASS on Tuesday that the doctors had requested the additional screening themselves, and it was not compulsory.

Russia's Defense Ministry initially claimed it was just a failed rocket engine test, but later Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear energy corporation, admitted the test involved a "radioisotope source of energy" -- or, as the company's spokespeople put it in comments to the Fontanka newspaper, "a nuclear battery."

U.S. intelligence officials believe it "likely" was a failed test of the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, known in Russia as the 9M730 Burevestnik. President Vladimir Putin boasted in a 2018 speech about a new, experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile with virtually unlimited range and the ability to penetrate U.S. missile defense systems.

Who should be worried?

Many Russian and U.S. military analysts have long expressed doubts about whether Skyfall exists, or whether the core technology involved is even viable. The U.S. experimented with similar technology decades ago, but abandoned it as the highly unstable, nuclear-powered missile engines weren't deemed to be worth the associated risks.

"This accident reminds us how hard this is and how complicated it is, and just because President Putin made a speech talking about six new scary things, it doesn't mean that they're going to actually happen or happen any time soon," Lynn Rusten, at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative organization, told CBS News on Tuesday.

Rusten said the people who should be most concerned by the explosion in northern Russia, "are the Russian citizens, who should be asking their government 'why are we doing this?'"

Commenting on the accident Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov would neither confirm nor deny suggestions about a test of a Skyfall missile.

He said the organization that carried out the test "gave information about it and explained the cause of the accident that occurred during testing and, unfortunately for all of us, led to the tragic death of our colleagues. I have nothing to add to that."

Conflicting reports from Russian officials about the accident over the weekend prompted speculation that the blast might have been more damaging than they were letting on. Some commentators compared the release of information about the explosion to what happened in the immediate wake of the Chernobyl disaster, when it took the authorities several weeks to reveal the truth.

CBSNews.com's Tucker Reals in London and CBS News' Christina Ruffini in Washington D.C. contributed to this report. </s> Eight miners died Thursday when a methane gas explosion tore through a pit in western Ukraine, in the latest mine disaster in the ex-Soviet state.

Rescuers said they had managed to save an additional 20 miners who were trapped underground when the blast hit the mine in the western Lviv region near the border with Poland.

Ukraine's emergency ministry and prosecutors said eight miners died. The ministry said six others were hurt.

Officials said Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and Energy Minister Igor Nasalyk immediately left for the site after hearing the news.

Ukraine has frequent mine accidents that claim dozens of lives at a time.

But this is the first major explosion reported this year.

Ukraine relies heavily on coal for electricity and heat despite efforts by Western donors to weaken the east European country's dependency on the polluting fuel.

Many of the mines are in a dilapidated condition and deemed too dangerous to operate.

The region's governor Oleg Synyutka said the mine was preparing to raise its output at the time of the blast.

Ukraine is currently experiencing a rail strike by pro-Kiev army members and their sympathisers who have halted the coal trade with the heavily industrial east.

Most of Ukraine's coal is produced in the eastern region that has been the site of a 34-month separatist conflict that has claimed at least 10,000 lives.

This means that Ukraine is now trying to boost the operations of other pits under its control -- including the one in Lviv.

"Because we have stopped receiving coal from the east of Ukraine, we were preparing to increase the production output of the Lvovugol mines," Synyutka said in televised remarks.

"Whether this explosion is linked to that work or not is now being checked."

Officials said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was being briefed on the situation and had declared a day of national mourning over the disaster.

The head of Ukraine's Independent Trade Unions of Coal Miners Mykhaylo Volynets said the pit "had not been modernised for years".

It operated "using outdated equipment and lacked the necessary safety means," he said.

Ukraine has other natural resources such as oil and gas.

But those are preserved deep underground or offshore in the Sea of Azov -- a region claimed by Russia when it annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March 2014.

The war meanwhile has scared off foreign investors from betting big money on Ukrainian energy projects. </s> Russian authorities have told people in a village near the site of a deadly missile explosion involving a nuclear power test to "leave the territory", after the accident triggered a spike in radiation.

The country's state weather service said radiation levels spiked in the Russian city of Severodvinsk by up to 16 times last Thursday after what officials say was an explosion during a rocket engine test on a sea platform.

"We have received a notification ... about the planned activities of the military authorities. In this regard, residents of Nyonoksa were asked to leave the territory of the village from 14 August," authorities in Severodvinsk were quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

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It comes following an accident still cloaked in much secrecy, but which the nuclear agency Rosatom said occurred while engineers in Arkhangelsk, were testing a “nuclear isotope power source�? for a rocket engine, a tragedy that fuelled radiation fears and raised questions about a secretive weapons programme.

The accident, which occurred on the coast around 600 miles north of Moscow, killed five Russian nuclear engineers, who were laid to rest in funerals attended by thousands of mourners.

Shape Created with Sketch. Huge explosion at Russia ammunition depot: In pictures Show all 12 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Huge explosion at Russia ammunition depot: In pictures 1/12 An explosion at an ammunition depot near the town of Achinsk in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 2/12 Fire and smoke rise from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 Reuters 3/12 People watch from afar as as fire and smoke rise from the site of an explosion at an ammuntion depot in Russia on August 5 Reuters 4/12 Flaming residue is scattered in an explosion at at an ammunition depot near the town of Achinsk in Russia on August 5 Reuters 5/12 An explosion at an ammunitions factory is seen from 10 miles away in the town of Achinsk, Russia on August 5 AP 6/12 Fire and smoke rise from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 Reuters 7/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot as the sun sets in the town of Achinsk, Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 8/12 An explosion at an ammunitions factory is seen from 10 miles away in the town of Achinsk, Russia on August 5 AP 9/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 10/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 11/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 12/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 1/12 An explosion at an ammunition depot near the town of Achinsk in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 2/12 Fire and smoke rise from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 Reuters 3/12 People watch from afar as as fire and smoke rise from the site of an explosion at an ammuntion depot in Russia on August 5 Reuters 4/12 Flaming residue is scattered in an explosion at at an ammunition depot near the town of Achinsk in Russia on August 5 Reuters 5/12 An explosion at an ammunitions factory is seen from 10 miles away in the town of Achinsk, Russia on August 5 AP 6/12 Fire and smoke rise from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 Reuters 7/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot as the sun sets in the town of Achinsk, Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 8/12 An explosion at an ammunitions factory is seen from 10 miles away in the town of Achinsk, Russia on August 5 AP 9/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 10/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 11/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty 12/12 Smoke rises from the site of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia on August 5 AFP/Getty

On Tuesday, Russia's TASS news agency revealed medics who treated victims of the accident were sent to Moscow for medical examination.

The medics have signed an agreement promising not to divulge information about the incident, TASS cited an unnamed medical source as saying.

The Defence Ministry initially reported the explosion at the navy's testing range, near the village of Nyonoksa in northwestern Arkhangelsk, killed two people and injured six others.

State-controlled Rosatom then said over the weekend the blast also killed five of its workers and injured three others. It is not clear what the final death toll is.

The company said the victims were on a sea platform testing a rocket engine and were thrown into the sea by an explosion.

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Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev praised the victims as "true heroes" and the "pride of our country".

"Our further work on new weapons that we will certainly complete will be the best tribute to them," Mr Likhachev said during the funeral, according to Rosatom. "We will fulfil the Motherland's orders and fully protect its security."

Following the explosion, Russian authorities also closed part of Dvina Bay on the White Sea to shipping for a month, in what could be an attempt to prevent outsiders from seeing an operation to recover the missile debris.

The Severodvinsk city administration said the radiation level rose to 2 microsieverts per hour for about 30 minutes on Thursday before returning to the area's natural level of 0.1 microsieverts per hour. Emergency officials issued a warning to all workers to stay indoors and close the windows.

The radiation level of 2 microsieverts per hour is only slightly higher than the natural background radiation, which could vary between 0.1 and 0.4 microsieverts per hour. It is lower than the cosmic radiation that plane passengers are exposed to on longer haul flights.

Regional authorities have not reported any radiation increases after Thursday's spike.

Russian environmental groups have urged the government to release details of the radioactive leak, but officials offered no further details.

Neither the Defence Ministry nor Rosatom mentioned the type of rocket that exploded during the test, saying only that it had liquid propellant.

But Rosatom's mention of a "nuclear isotope power source" led some Russian media to conclude it was the Burevestnik (Petrel), a nuclear-powered cruise missile first revealed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in March 2018 during his state of the nation address along with other doomsday weapons.

While presenting the new missile, Mr Putin claimed it will have an unlimited range, allowing it to circle the globe unnoticed, bypassing the enemy's missile defence assets to strike undetected.

The president claimed the missile had successfully undergone the first tests, but observers were sceptical, arguing that such a weapon could be very difficult to handle and harmful to the environment.

Some reports suggested previous tests of the Burevestnik missile had been conducted on the barren Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya and the Kapustin Yar testing range in southern Russia before they were moved to Nyonoksa.

Moving the tests from unpopulated areas to a range close to a big city may reflect the military's increased confidence in the new weapon.

Additional reporting by agencies </s> The bodies of two miners have been recovered after an explosion rocked a coal mine in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic in Eastern Ukraine. Fifteen more people are missing, and survival chances appear slim.A methane explosion hit the SkhidKarbon coal mine in the village of Yurievka on Thursday, trapping 17 miners underground. The head of the Lugansk People's Republic (LNR), Leonid Pasechnik, said that the rescuers have pulled up two bodies. Fifteen people remain unaccounted for.The head of the region's emergency services, Evgeny Katsalapov,A witness reported that a total of 20 people were inside the mine at the time of the incident. A former overseer at the mine, who lives just 200 meters from the entrance, told Komsomolskaya Pravda daily that he felt a very powerful jolt and saw plumes of black smoke billowing from the mine.He said that he saw three miners climbing out of the mine shortly after the explosion ripped through it, adding that the chances of more people emerging unscathed are about zero.A mine-rescue unit of the Russian Emergencies Ministry was sent LNR to assist the local rescuers.SkhidKarbon halted its operations when the military conflict with Kiev started in 2014. The mine resumed coal output only last January, producing almost 30,000 tons of coal in 2018. </s> MOSCOW — Regional authorities in northwestern Russia say the Russian military has advised residents of a village near a navy testing range to move out following a rocket explosion that killed five nuclear engineers.

The Interfax news agency reported Tuesday that the regional administration based in Severodvinsk said a notice from the military recommended the evacuation due to unspecified activities at the test range.

Officials offered no further details about the advisory for the village of Nyonoksa.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has said the engineers were killed Thursday while they were testing a “nuclear isotope power source” for a rocket engine.

Local authorities in Severodvinsk, a city of 183,000, reported a brief spike in radiation levels after the explosion, spooking residents. Officials insist it didn’t pose any health hazards.
Ukrainian ecology minister Ostap Semerak warns of a major nuclear disaster if pro-Russia separatists go forward with a plan to flood a mine where a small nuclear weapon was tested in the 1970s. Semerak appeals for international assistance to prevent the flooding.