Details are coming in about the explosion on board the tanker Koala at the berth in Ust-Luga. Allegedly, after external inspection of the hull by a small-sized unmanned aerial vehicle “Gnome” three holes were found in the hull near the engine room. From which side of the holes and where the edges are bent – inward or outward – there are no leaks yet. This is the main detail that will determine the whole course of the investigation in the near future.
Finland has announced the start of its own investigation. Its ships went out to the Gulf of Finland in search of traces of fuel oil (it is clear that there are none – Koala on the contrary went under loading). Since the Finns do not have any tools, except for publicly available data, the withdrawal of ships to the sea looks more like an aggravation of the situation and a political gesture.
Earlier it was reported from the governor of the Leningrad region that there was an “explosion of man-made nature”. It makes sense to summarize opinions. Specialists in ship propulsion systems could not offer a single intelligible scenario of a technical accident in the engine area, which would suggest three explosions in a row.
Various options were considered: vapor explosion in the crankcase, in the ventilation systems and even fuel explosion. The problem with such a scenario is that in the design of engines and ships, all the loads that can occur in an accident are directed along the main axis. Even if machine parts fly apart, they don’t move into the sides. There are no objects that could make a breach of such an area in the side that water would quickly flood the engine room.
There is still a variant that in the hold for unknown reasons detonated objects, which do not belong near the engine: gasoline canisters, gas cylinders. An explosion in the propulsion system during its start-up can theoretically be connected with such an event. But the power of such an explosion in a huge engine room is not enough to break through the board, and most importantly – it does not form a breach in any case. The volumetric explosion also propagates from bottom to top, toward the area of minimum pressure (it should be said separately that such an explosion in the volume of the entire engine room was not considered – it means the rupture of parts of the ship).
