Report: 3 Designers of Iran's Nuclear Plant Died in Russian Plane Crash
Russian nuclear scientists, who planned, designed, built and put into operation Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr this year, were killed in the Russian plane that crashed earlier in the week, the Israeli website Debkafile reported.
Debkafile's sources revealed that the three scientists Sergey Ryzhov, Gennady Banuyk and Nikolay Trunov, were among the 44 passengers who were killed when the plane exploded into flames after crashing on a highway just short of its airport.
The RusAir Tupolev 134 was trying to land at its destination of Petrozavodsk in the Karelia region of northwestern Russia in bad weather but failed to make the runway and instead hurtled onto a road two kilometers, leaving eight survivors fighting for their lives.
“Russian authorities have ordered an investigation to find out why all three senior nuclear scientists were aboard the same airliner in violation of Russian security regulations,” Debkafile reported.
The regulations prohibit more than one high-ranking politician, military figure or executive of a sensitive industry taking the same flight.
The website said that the “first assumption was that the disaster occurred due to human error.”
Debkafile's intelligence sources quoted Iranian and Western intelligence officials as “offering the opinion that the Bushehr reactor's mixed components made it vulnerable to the Stuxnet malworm's invasion of its control system two years ago.”
“The three Russian scientists spent February and March 2011 at Bushehr after the Russian Nuclear Energy Commission insisted that the nuclear fuel rods be removed until they were sure the plant would not explode. The rods have since been reloaded and the reactor went online last month,” the sources told the website.
This was the worst Russian aviation disaster since April 10, 2010, when a plane carrying the Polish president, his wife and many other Polish dignitaries crashed in similar circumstances near the city of Smolensk, killing 97 people.
Source: Agence France Presse
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