Accident at major Russian hydropower plant kills 7 people

Seven people were killed and 11 people were injured in an accident that occurred early Monday at Russia’s Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant on the Yenisey River in the constituent republic of Khakasia, Dmitry Kudryavtsev, head of the Emergency Situations Ministry’s Siberian branch, told ITAR-TASS.

Water flooded a hall of the power plant and its second unit was destroyed, a spokesperson for hydropower holding RusHydro, which owns the plant, told ITAR-TASS.

A hydraulic impact may be the cause of the accident, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

Operations of all the power plant’s 10 units were stopped and the accident poses no threat of flooding the residential areas located downriver, Shoigu said.

Four aluminum smelters of Russia’s largest aluminum producer United Company RUSAL, which received electric power supplies from the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant, continue to operate as usual because they are now receiving power supplies from other regions, the press office of UC RUSAL said.

The accident has not affected electric power supplies to local residential areas, said a representative of Siberia Interregional Grid Company (Siberia IDGC), which manages the power distribution system of the Siberian Federal District.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to set up a commission in order to resume operations of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant as fast as possible, the government’s press service said Monday.

The Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry has tasked the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Oversight, or Rostekhnadzor, with investigating the causes of the accident and preventing possible damage to the environment, the ministry said in a statement Monday.

The Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant, launched in 1978, has an installed capacity of 6,700 megawatts and produces about 24 billion kilowatt-hours of electric power annually.