Negligence Factor in Russian Power Plant Accident

Russia's top industrial safety oversight official said Saturday that negligence was a major factor in a devastating accident at the country's biggest hydroelectric power plant, and hinted that high-level officials could face trial over the disaster that killed 75 workers.

Outlining a report on the causes of the Aug. 17 accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant in southern Siberia, Rostekhnadzor director Nikolai Kutin described it in chilling detail. Part of an overstrained turbine unit weighing 1,500 tons snapped off its restraining bolts and sailed into the air, he said, unleashing flooding, short circuits and wreckage that crippled the plant and doomed dozens of workers in seconds.

While the direct causes were essentially technical, he said, bad decisions stretching years back set the stage for a catastrophe that could probably have been avoided.

The purpose of the 140-page report is not to establish guilt, Kutin stressed, but it lists six people it says were "conducive" to the accident. They include former state-controlled utility chief Anatoly Chubais, an influential figure the Kremlin has used as a lighting rod for public anger since he led a post-Soviet privatization campaign many Russians saw as criminally unfair.

"Ours is a democratic state, so the courts determine who is to blame," Kutin told a news conference.

The accident drowned helpless workers trapped in frigid water and sent some panicked residents downstream from the dam fleeing for high ground. It underlined worries about the crumbling infrastructure and careless management that hampers Russia's recovery from decades of communism and cuts short the life expectancy of its citizens.

The report and Kutin's account are likely to compound those concerns.

The chain of events that led to the accident began hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Bratsk, where a fire at another hydropower facility caused damage that prompted authorities to increase the burden on the Sayano-Shushenskaya, Kutin said. One of its 10 turbine-generator units, which had been idle, was switched on to compensate and soon strained past its limit.