10 of the World's Worst Energy Disasters:
Sayano–Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Power Station Explosion

Rescue efforts continue following an explosion at Russia’s largest Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant that left 17 dead and 58 missing.

Photo: Kolbasov Alexander/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

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What:
Sayano–Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Power Station

Where:
Khakassia, Russia

When:
August 17, 2009

What happened:
Sayano-Sheshenskaya is the largest power plant in Russia and the world's sixth-largest hydroelectric plant. On August 17, 2009, the station's engine and turbine rooms flooded and a transformer exploded. Seventy-five people died in the explosion.

In a 2007 review, 85 percent of the station's equipment had been deemed obsolete. Representatives from RusGidro, owners of the plant, claimed that all necessary upgrades had been made to the facility prior to the accident.

The longterm impact:
The accident resulted in an oil spill that released around 40 tons of oil into the Yenisei River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean. Around 400 tons of trout in two fisheries were killed as a result. The plant's damaged turbines were reopened in 2010.

Workers remove snow and ice at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, with a huge block of ice at its foot formed because of the Yenisei River water running through an open spillway with low air temperatures, near the Siberian village of Cheryomushki, about 323 miles south of Krasnoyarsk, January 30, 2010. (Photo: Ilya Naymushin / Reuters)

Next > >
The BP Gulf oil spill

More of the World's Worst Energy Disasters

The Prestige oil spill The Kingston fly ash spill The Three Mile Island meltdown The Upper Big Branch mine disaster

The Exxon Valdez disaster The Kuwait oil fires The Johnstown flood The Chernobyl power plant meltdown

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