Russia conducted further expeditions in 1994 and 1995 to better seal in the nuclear torpedos as they had been damaged in the accident and were jammed in place, too dangerous to remove. The new video footage from Ægir 6000 still shows extensive damage to the submarine's hull.

But a Russian survey in 1992 found cracks along the entire length of the hull and its hard to believe that the submarine has not continued to degrade in the decades that followed the sinking. On various occasions between 1993 and 1994 , Russian officials warned that as time went on the risks of radiation leakage would only increase and called for routine monitoring of the wreckage.

Heldal, the researcher from the Institute of Marine Research, said she wasn't surprised by the sample showing a potential radiation leak, according to NRK . There have been numerous expeditions to investigate the wreck since the accident that have detected elevated levels of radiation around the boat, though there has never been any confirmation of an actual leak.

Komsomolets burned for hours before finally sinking. She has remained at the bottom of the Barents Sea ever since. Her reactor was not the only radioactive payload on board, as she was also carrying two torpedoes with nuclear warheads.

A screen capture from the video that the Russian-Norwegian research team took of Komsomolets using Ægir 6000 showing the poor state of a portion of just one portion of the boat's hull.

Still, experts have cautioned that the danger from any radioactive leaks the boat may have is likely to be minimal given how deep the wreck is and the limited amount of sea life there, to begin with. Heldal said she was confident that it is still safe for Norwegian fisherman to continue working in the area.

Still, "the new surveys are important for understanding the pollution risk posed by Komsomolets," Ingar Amundsen, Head of the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority explained to NRK. The new survey has also taken on a new dimension given that Russia recently suffered a new submarine accident, which also involved a fire caused by an electrical fault on board a nuclear-powered boat.

The sub in question is widely reported to be the top-secret deep-diving spy submarine Losharik and the incident, which occurred on July 1, 2019, killed 14 sailors. Russia says it was able to safely recover the submarine this time and that there was no radiation leak from this new accident, though details about the exact scope of the damage remain murky.

"They all shared one and the same fate – to save the lives of their comrades, to save their vessel and to prevent a catastrophe of global proportions at the cost of their own lives," Sergei Pavlov, an aide to the Russian Navy’s top commander, reportedly said at a funeral on July 6, 2019, according to Russian media outlet Fontanka. This may imply that the situation on board was more precarious than Kremlin has acknowledged.

Losharik is already shrouded in secrecy, so we may never know for sure what happened exactly and it may be hard to tell when and if the Russians return her to operational service. But she does appear to have escaped a fate similar to Komsomolets, wasting away at the bottom of the sea.

UPDATE: 7/10/2019—

Norway's Institute of Marine Research has released an updated figure about the radioactivity of one of the seawater samples taken from the Komsomolets wreck, now saying that it is 800,000 times more radioactive than uncontaminated water, according to The Barents Observer. The research team's assessments about the risks that the wreck poses to commercial fishing in the region and to sea life in the area, in general, remain unchanged.