A Russian nuclear submarine with at least 10 crew on board has sunk in the Barents Sea. A spokesman for Russia's Northern Fleet said one of the crew had been rescued and the bodies of two others had been retrieved, the Interfax news agency reports. Russia's Navy chief-of-staff Viktor Kravchenko told the NTV television channel that "the hopes of finding alive the missing are very slight". Mr Kravchenko said the submarine's two nuclear reactors were shut down when it sank at 0400 local time (0200 GMT) about three miles off Kildin Island, in heavy seas. Russian officials said there were no weapons on board the vessel and there was no danger of nuclear contamination. The submarine - a November class K-159 - had been decommissioned in 1989 and was on its way to be stripped of its nuclear reactor and then to be scrapped, the Northern Fleet's spokesman said. The spokesman said the vessel was being towed on four floating hulls from its base in the town of Gremikha to a plant in the town of Polarnye to be scrapped. He said the vessel became unstable after one of the hulls was torn off in a fierce storm and then sank in waters 170 metres deep. A Russian military prosecutor has opened an inquiry into the incident. It comes three years after Russia's worst peacetime naval disaster when all 118 crew of the nuclear submarine Kursk died when it sank in the Barents Sea on 12 August 2000. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Nuclear submarine Kursk.