MOSCOW, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Russia s top nuclear official promised on Monday to succeed in developing new weapons as he paid tribute to five scientists killed in what U.S. experts suspect was the botched test of a new missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin .

The five scientists were buried in the closed city of Sarovon Monday. They died last Thursday in what state nuclear agency Rosatom has said was an accident during a rocket test on a sea platform off northern Russia.

The defense ministry initially said background radiation had remained normal, but a spike in radiation levels recorded in a nearby city prompted U.S.-based nuclear experts to suspect the failed test involved a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

The experts said they suspected the radiation release resulted from a mishap during the testing of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile.

The Burevestnik was one of an array of new strategic weapons touted by Putin last year. Tensions between Moscow and Washington over arms control have been exacerbated by the demise this month of a landmark nuclear treaty.

The Kremlin has not commented on the accident.

At memorial events in Sarov that included a gun salute, Rosatom head Alexei Likhachev praised the deceased nuclear experts as the pride of the country and the pride of the atomic sector.

The best tribute to them will be our continued work on new models of weapons, which will definitely be carried out to the end, Likhachev was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.

In a video interview published late on Sunday, an official at the scientists research institute in Sarov did not spell out exactly what they had been doing, but suggested that they had been working on a small nuclear reactor.

The official, Vyacheslav Solovyev, said that the institute was working on sources of thermal or electric energy using radioactive materials, including fissile materials and radioisotope materials.

He said that these developments are also actually happening in many countries. The Americans last year...also tested a small-scale reactor... Our center also continues to work in this direction.

The institutes work serves both civilian and military ends, he said.

The city administration in Sarov, which is around 400kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow, announced two days of mourning, saying the experts died while performing a task of national importance, RIA reported.

Rosatom named the five dead scientists as Alexei Vyushin, Evgeny Koratayev, Vyacheslav Lipshev, Sergei Pichugin and Vladislav Yanovsky.