The recovery of the Kursk was a success that derived from a tragedy. The successful and almost trouble free recovery of the sunken nuclear powered submarine Kursk was completed by a group of commercial organizations and not by its military operator. This was because the Russian Federation itself did not possess the resources and expertise to do this and, moreover, it had never planned to do so.
In planning and carrying through the entire recovery operation, the Dutch consortium Mammoet-Smit engaged quite remarkable levels of ingenuity of approach to this unique problem. Their strategy of building on their experience of their equipment and of salvage operations in general proved to be sound and ultimately successful.
Because there was insufficient time to generate and evaluate a conventional postincident nuclear safety case, members of the Nuclear Coordinating Group had to arrive at judgments drawn from their experience in nuclear safety, weaponry and engineering. Moreover, in doing so they had to cross the divide between East and West, accounting not just for the different approaches to nuclear and engineering technologies, but also how the safety reasoning of the original designs could be integrated into the salvage scheme.
This demanding and unique approach was shown to be sound because there was no radiological release or significant radiation hazard to any of the M-S personnel or contactors during any part of the recovery operations.