Accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP. Analysis of social protection of persons affected by man-made and radiation disasters
On August 17, 2009, a large-scale accident occurred at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP due to the destruction of the turbine cover of the hydroelectric unit. As a result of the tragedy, 75 people died, serious damage was caused to both the premises themselves and the equipment of the station. The operation of the hydroelectric power station had to be temporarily stopped due to the threat of an environmental catastrophe in the region.
Catastrophe
The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is one of the largest in the world and the largest hydroelectric power plant in Russia. She began her work in 1978.
On August 17, 2009, at 8:13 local time, an unexpected destruction of the second hydroelectric unit occurred, as a result of which huge masses of water began to flow uncontrollably through the shaft of the hydroelectric unit.
The engine room, the premises under it, as well as all the hydroelectric units of the station, without exception, were flooded very quickly. Moreover, due to flooding, short circuits occurred at the operating hydroelectric units, which put them out of action.
The entire station turned out to be de-energized, the power supply to the alarm system, automation devices, lighting was lost, and there was no operational communication. Since the gates of water intakes did not close due to the lack of electric power, water continued to flow in large quantities to idle turbines, which led to their destruction.
It was possible to manually close the gates of water intakes and open the gates of the spillway dam only by one in the afternoon. After that, all the water through the gates was supplied idly.
Investigation into the causes of the disaster
According to Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Shmatko, the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP was the largest and at the same time the most incomprehensible accident in the history of hydropower. Several departments were involved in the investigation of the disaster. Among other things, a parliamentary commission was created to investigate the disaster.
Due to the fact that initially the causes of the accident were not clear even to specialists, many hypotheses and assumptions arose around the event. Versions of water hammer, sabotage and terrorist attack were considered. However, no traces of explosives were found.
Ultimately, Rostekhnadzor published an act on the website of the department, according to which the cause of the accident was the failure of the turbine cover, which, in turn, happened due to the destruction of the studs. This was attributed to the constant overloads experienced by the station equipment.
The causes of the largest man-made disaster in the history of Russia, it would seem, have been established, and the perpetrators have been brought to justice. However, there is still an opinion that the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP was planned.
Multiple factor
As a rule, any man-made disaster consists of trifles in which the human factor is involved, and it does not matter whether it is criminal connivance or elementary negligence. The accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station (SSHHPP), which occurred on the morning of August 17, 2009, was no exception. Due to the escape of thousands of cubic meters of water and subsequent destruction, 75 people died and 13 were injured.
The Rostekhnadzor Commission quickly identified the causes of the accident and published the names of people whose mistakes and miscalculations led to the tragedy. Among them are important officials: Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Sinyugin, General Director of OJSC "TGC-1" Boris Vainzikher, and former head of RAO "UES of Russia" Anatoly Chubais.
The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP was officially put into operation in 2000: the corresponding document was signed by Anatoly Chubais. The investigation noted that the head of RAO "UES of Russia" approved the Act of the Central Commission for the acceptance into operation of the hydropower complex of the SSHHPP "without a comprehensive assessment of the information available at that time about its functioning."
And then followed a chain of bureaucratic abuses and violations of the norms of exploitation, which ultimately led to disastrous consequences. As the head of Rostechnadzor Nikolai Kutyin noted, the accident occurred due to a combination of various reasons: design, operational and repair.
In particular, it was found that in a matter of hours before the accident, the second hydroelectric unit of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station reached exorbitant capacities six times, and the vibration increased four times during this time. However, no one sounded the alarm.
The main cause of the disaster was stress fatigue of the fasteners (studs) of the design of hydroelectric unit No. 2, which, with increased vibration, led to their rupture and, as a result, to the destruction of the turbine cover and water breakthrough. Summing up the results of the investigation, the chairman of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Alexander Aseev, said that the fastening studs were made of steel "not capable of withstanding the necessary loads."
Biggest disaster
To date, the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is the largest disaster in Russian history at a hydropower facility. Sergei Shoigu compared this accident in terms of its impact on the economic and sociological aspects of life in Russia with the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The accident at the SSHHPP caused a great public outcry and became, perhaps, the most discussed event of 2009 in the media. In particular, many reviews of witnesses of this disaster were published.
For example, Oleg Myakishev, an employee of the SSHHPP, recalled how he heard a growing rumble, and then saw how the cover of the hydroelectric unit was rearing and rising. “Then I saw a rotor rise from under it. He was spinning. Myakishev continues. The eyes didn't believe it. He climbed three meters. Stones flew, pieces of reinforcement, we began to dodge them. I figured: water rises, 380 cubic meters per second, and - tear, in the direction of the tenth unit. I thought I wouldn't make it."
Raging streams of water in a matter of seconds flooded the engine room and the rooms below it. All 10 hydraulic units were under water, after which a series of short circuits occurred that disabled the machines. Hydro units No. 7 and No. 9 were completely destroyed, under the streams of water and flying fragments of structures, the walls and ceilings of the turbine hall in the area of hydro units No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 also collapsed. The area of destruction reached 1200 square meters.
Effects
The accident at the SSHHPP led to a large power shortage in the entire energy system of Siberia. The supply of electricity to a number of Kuzbass enterprises was limited, temporary restrictions affected the largest metallurgical enterprises, including the Novokuznetsk Metallurgical Plant and the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant, as well as a number of coal mines and cuts.
Power engineers seriously reduced the load on the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant and the Kemerovo ferroalloy plant and completely de-energized the Sayan and Khakas aluminum plants. Less than a day after the accident, as in several fishing farms located downstream of the Yenisei, a massive sea trout began.
All property of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP was insured by ROSNO for the amount of $200 million. In addition, each employee of the complex was insured by ROSNO for 500,000 rubles. 18 dead and 1 injured were insured by Rosgosstrakh LLC, the total amount of payments exceeded 800 thousand rubles.
Property risks were also reinsured on the international market, mostly with the Munich Re Group. With the German company, all disputes were settled without any problems, but with the Swiss insurer Infrassure Ltd, litigation over the payment of more than 800 million rubles dragged on for as much as 3 years.
The catastrophe at the SSHHPP forced the authorities to monitor the state of other water power complexes. Thus, in an analytical note of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, which dealt with the problems of JSC RusHydro, it was noted that at many stations of the company “there is an operation of obsolete and physically worn equipment that has developed a standard park resource of 25-30 years, the wear of which amounted to almost 50% ", and "the degree of wear of certain types of hydraulic equipment - hydraulic turbines and hydro generators, hydraulic structures - has exceeded 60% or reached a critical level."
Cyber attack?
Far from all the conclusions of the commissions investigating the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP satisfied Gennady Rassokhin, a power engineer by profession. According to the documents of Rostekhnadzor and the parliamentary commission, the main cause of the accident was metal fatigue of the studs securing the turbine cover on hydroelectric unit No. 2.
However, Rassokhin wonders why there are traces of the so-called “temper colors” on the fracture surfaces of the studs, which are characteristic only for “fresh” surfaces of metal fractures, and not for surfaces with a long fracture? Such a discrepancy may suggest a planned disaster.
At one time, Edward Snowden published materials confirming that the United States National Security Agency is in full swing preparing for future digital wars, the goal of which is complete control over the world via the Internet. In particular, it was noted there that the Politerain project, run by the NSA, is creating a team of so-called "digital snipers", whose task is to disable computers that control the operation of water supply systems, power plants, factories, airports, as well as the interception of cash flows.
A blogger, programmer and physicist by training, who introduces himself as Mr. Andrey, put forward an alternative version of the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP. In his opinion, the root cause of the disaster was the Stuxnet virus, which, as an element of a cyber weapon, was previously used to undermine the Russian economy.
Indeed, military analysts recognize that Stuxnet is a new milestone in the development of cyber weapons. Today, he confidently stepped over the threshold of virtual space and began to threaten not only informational, but also real-life objects.
Mr. Andrey describes his scenario that happened at the SSHGES. At that moment, when an accident occurred at the second hydraulic unit due to resonance, the equipment was controlled by automation, the blogger claims. The manual control for outputting constant power was disabled and the unit operated in the load ripple compensation mode in the energy systems of Western Siberia.
The programmer also draws attention to the fact that in March 2009, Ukrainian specialists worked at the facility, who, in the process of checking the equipment (during a scheduled repair), took the parameters of resonant frequencies from the second unit. Where and in what hands this data fell is unknown, but it can be assumed, comments Mr. Andrey.
Possessing these data, according to the expert, it was not difficult to swing the system of the unit through the control microcontroller so that it would gradually, over several hours, "drive a turbine unit with an electric generator on one shaft into the resonance zone." Naturally, they didn’t think about any information security then, despite the fact that this system had direct access to the Internet, the blogger concludes.
Monuments have already appeared on most of the graves: someone is depicted in full growth against the backdrop of a hydroelectric power station, poems or simply the words are engraved somewhere: “Here lie a father and son, who came out for a minute, gone forever ...”.
Looking at this last refuge of first-class specialists, those who visit this churchyard for the first time usually feel uneasy from the realization that the date of death on all the tombstones located on the large “patch” at the entrance is the same - August 17, 2009.
Uyskoye cemetery in Khakassia - almost all those who died in the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station are buried here. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
"They're all down there"
Not all relatives and relatives of those 75 people who once left for work and never returned were able to survive the loss. Now, mothers, fathers, children, wives, husbands rest next to the graves of those whose lives were cut short at the hydroelectric power station. People come here every day, stand at the graves for a long time, then pray in the chapel built right there and silently leave.
One of those who forever connected his fate with a hydroelectric power plant - Alexander Bezrukov, professional electric and gas welder. Ironically, he participated in its construction several decades ago. “He helped her to be born, and she helped him to die,” is how his colleagues now say about him.
His wife - Nina Bezrukova, like dozens of widows, does not like to talk to journalists. He says that he does not want to reopen a wound that has not healed: “What happened from my memory will never go away. For two years after the hydroelectric accident, all I did was ask myself questions. Only recently it dawned on me: this happened, you need to live with it, you need to accept it, no matter how painful it is.
The widow of an employee of the HPP, Nina Bezrukova, after the tragedy, could not even leave the house for six months. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
She met her husband in the 70s at the construction of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. A graduate of the Sverdlovsk technical school came to Cheryomushki to visit her parents, and she, like many young people of that time, was drawn into the romance of the all-Union construction.
“After I visited the station, I realized that I don’t want to leave here,” says Nina. - Soon I was hired as an assistant welder. I ended up in the same team where Sasha worked. I was 19, he was 21. Despite the fact that she was insanely shy, and he was intelligent, everything somehow gradually began to spin. They got married, had children, and waited for a grandson.
The inhabitants of Khakassia have always been told that the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is a reliable construction, nothing can ever happen to it, because it was built with high quality, conscientiously, as they said, “for centuries”. None of those living in the village of Cheryomushki, from where one can hear how water beats against the crests of the dam every second, could even imagine that something could happen to this colossus.
“In March 2009, five months before the accident, Sasha retired,” the widow recalls. But he was in no hurry to say goodbye to work. I repeatedly told him: stop working, let's start living for ourselves. But he wanted to work hard for another year. He had many students, the authorities consulted with him, it was considered - still, such work experience at the station!
Now the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is almost restored, work is being carried out in several shifts. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
About three months before the accident, Nina began to be haunted by a premonition of misfortune that had come from nowhere. But then she did not attach any importance to this:
“Very often, while working around the house, I caught myself thinking that I was burying Sasha. Such "visions" were driven away from me, but they returned. I couldn't figure out why this came to my mind. Why's that? Often she woke up at night and the first thing she checked was whether her husband was alive. I look at him - he breathes, everything is in order, and then I fall asleep. I was constantly haunted by some kind of anxiety. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get rid of her."
last hours
An incredibly responsible person by nature, that morning, 55-year-old Alexander, perhaps, overslept for the first time in many years.
“I heard through my sleep how he turned off the alarm. Despite the fact that she herself madly wanted to sleep, she understood that she needed to wake her up. Somehow at seven o'clock he got up and quickly got ready. Sasha kissed me, went out into the entrance and stopped. This has never happened. He turned and looked at me as if for the last time. I will never forget that dreary, parting look. He had such beautiful eyes: light, blue. Then I said: “Sasha, how beautiful you are with me.”
Closing the door behind her husband, the woman went to the kitchen to make coffee. Somewhere at 8:13, the light blinked, but she did not attach any serious importance to this fact. Soon her son called her and asked: “What happened at the hydroelectric power station?”. But Nina didn't know. She immediately looked out the window and saw dozens of citizens running somewhere.
Residents were sure: the hydroelectric power station is a reliable design. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
“I remember Sashino grabbed her driver’s license and ran out into the street. None of the people knew anything, everyone hurried up the mountain, towards the dachas. And then I meet my husband’s boss and ask: “What happened? Where is Sasha? And he answers me: “They are all down there.” I returned home, and what started here ... ".
A few months after the incident, Nina Bezrukova, as she now admits, was on sedatives. Months of life, although rather of existence. She, like dozens of widows, walked like a zombie, not noticing anything around.
“We were given some drugs. We drank them. For six months I did not leave the house, I roared like a beluga. A few months later, the children began to take me to psychologists. Here, in Cheryomushki, I went to courses, in Krasnoyarsk I was observed by a good specialist. I was offered to sell the apartment and leave Khakassia away. But I don't want to leave this village. This is my husband's grave. No, I'm not at all afraid to live next to a hydroelectric power station - what happens, happens. You can't escape fate. At first, when I left here somewhere far away, it was easier for me. But when I returned, I understood: this place for me is some kind of black hole. Everything that I struggled with somewhere far away, came back here. It was like that for two years. From constant tears it became hard to see. Now I have to wear glasses.
Only after two years, or maybe three, when exactly - she doesn’t remember exactly, did she realize that she needed to learn to live on. Psychologists advised to deal with relatives only when she has free time. And the woman listened. Now she spends a lot of time in the country, travels often, passed the exams in the traffic police, drives a car confidently.
“You can’t bring a person back, you need to live on. The dead are gone forever. But, they say, someday they will return. Many young women who lost their loved ones on Sayano-Shushenskaya started life from scratch. I am happy for them, besides, they need to get on their own feet, raise children. And life, no matter what, goes on.”
"There was silence in the village"
Valentina Gartseva - former kindergarten teacher She is now raising three grandchildren. Their mother- Inna Zholobova— died on the day of the accident. At the time when the second unit failed, she was in the engine room, working as a plasterer-painter.
Valentina Gartseva issued custody of three grandchildren: their mother died in the engine room of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
“I remember that day, my daughter went to work, I slept at home with the children, I heard screaming, noise on the street. She looked out the window, a man running past said: gather the kids and run to the sports complex, the hydroelectric power station broke through. Then my son came running, took us with the guys and took us to the dacha. I knew that my daughter was there, but I didn’t even have the thought that she might die, ”recalls Valentina Gartseva.
Information soon appeared: everything is in order with the hydroelectric dam. The family returned home. “I was busy with urgent matters, there was no time to go outside, listen to what they were saying. The son came, I ask why Inna does not call? She is always so worried about the children. He replied: Mom, Inna will never call again.
The son took Valentina Georgievna to another apartment so as not to frighten the children. Neighbors came running and tried to calm me down. There was no hope: Inna's body was found within the first hours after the accident.
Valentina Gartseva recalls that evening: she says that it was so quiet in the village, you can’t even hear the birds. No one really wanted to talk about what happened - this is now a topic that they are trying to bypass in everyday communication. The village is small, everyone knows each other, the families of the victims try not to disturb them once again.
In the village of Cheryomushki, they don’t like to talk about what happened in 2009. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
“Inna’s daughter immediately learned about the death of her mother. The middle one, Kirill, we tried to prepare - he was after a traumatic brain injury, we were afraid for the child. When Inna's body was at our house, he was taken to the neighbors - but he ran in and saw her, - recalls Valentina. We didn't tell the younger one. Only once at dinner, when he did not want to eat, I say: mommy is looking at you from heaven, and you are being capricious. He asked why is mom there? I replied that it did. The boy didn't say anything. But at night he began to cry and scream - so it was every day for the next six months. Now he is already big, he understands everything, he goes with us to the cemetery.”
Two sons of Valentina Gartseva still work at the hydroelectric power station. She says she never asked them to leave - work is work. “We are raising children together with my husband, gradually everything is getting better. The eldest, until the sixth grade, studied for fives, when Inna died, she moved out for only threes. Only now they started to catch up, they obey us well, - says Valentina. - We received compensation from the company, apartments too, they even helped with money for their repair. We were taken to the sanatorium recently.”
The construction of the onshore spillway at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station began even before the accident, but what happened in 2009 forced the power engineers to accelerate greatly. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
The trial of the accident continues, but the family of Inna Zholobova does not go there. “It’s hard for me, and I don’t understand anything about it,” Valentina Gartseva explains. - Of course, I would like the guilty to be punished. But I don’t know who is to blame, I didn’t work there, and I don’t want to judge just like that.”
On the anniversary of the accident, she does not come to the cemetery - she says the atmosphere is too heavy. He tries to visit often, but on other days.
The grandchildren of Valentina Georgievna will probably go to work for Sayano-Shushenskaya: the eldest is going to be a welder, the middle one plans to study hydropower engineering, the smallest one does not yet talk about her dreams.
“We heard the rumble, but we thought it was necessary”
HPS employee Egor Mikerov one of the survivors of the disaster. His office was above the machine room, completely flooded at the time of the accident.
Egor Mikerov is one of the employees who survived the accident. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
Early in the morning he came to work, removed the alarm from the office, booted up the computer. Suddenly I heard a strange rumble: at first small, then - increasingly intensifying. And cotton. “After the clap, the lights were turned off,” Yegor says. — I have an office on the basement floor and the closest to the machine room. A stream of water rushed into the corridor, a huge stream. I realized that I would not run to the emergency exit at the end of the corridor - I have cerebral palsy, I am a disabled child, - says Yegor. - I closed the door and climbed out through the window into the street, there streams were already whipping from two doors, the water was about knee-deep. A woman jumped out of a neighboring building, together with her we slowly went to the checkpoint, the water kept coming, but we managed to catch on to some kind of visor. Then the guys came running and pulled me out. They put me in a car and sent me home.”
Egor recalls: the worst thing is the funnels that formed above the open basements, office furniture, iron safes were sucked into it, and a person could easily be sucked in. A couple of times the craters were only a couple of meters from Yegor, but we were lucky, we managed to get around them.
Eyewitnesses recall that at first the noise did not cause concern. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
Almost no one understood what happened, there was a guess that the sixth unit had broken down, because it was going to be launched on that very day. Therefore, the resulting vibration did not surprise anyone. A hum at startup is normal. Only when the noise began to grow did they realize that something had gone wrong.
Yegor recalls: many employees arrived at the hydroelectric power station two hours after the accident: people were leaving their vacation, they were coming from other cities. Cellular communication stopped working in the first hour - it could not withstand the overload. No one was called - but everyone rushed to the hydroelectric power station.
“It was quite obvious that only the Ministry of Emergency Situations could not cope, it was impossible, no matter how many people they had, so everyone who could help,” says Yegor. - I miraculously managed to get through to my father and mother, I said: pack your things, I thought there would be an evacuation. In the morning there was a terrible fog, the body of the dam was almost invisible, there were fears that something had happened to it. Then I realized that it was intact - otherwise, stones and cobblestones would have begun to fall from the mountains.
Ambulances drove along the street every now and then. The village was empty - everyone went to the station. The search for victims began, which lasted more than a month. Yegor says he lost hope much earlier: “The relatives believed to the last, but I knew that if people were not found on the first day, it would be almost impossible to save them: more than 24 hours a person is unlikely to hold out in the water.”
Sayano-Shushinskaya HPP. Photo: AiF / Ludmila Alekseeva
Yegor does not like to overdramatize what happened: “Yes, 75 people died (we count among ourselves - 76, one girl was pregnant, she was about to go on maternity leave). All this incredible grief. But after all, how many people were still saved.
A month later, drying and repair began in the premises. The HPPs gradually began to be restored, people returned to their offices and began to fulfill their direct duties.
Yegor soon got married, his daughter was born: “I can’t say that at that moment I experienced some kind of colossal stress, I couldn’t recover for a long time, you see, I’m disabled, I’m used to stress from childhood, maybe that’s why I quickly came to myself, I'm not complaining about anything. The village is small, and we experience all these troubles together. But life goes on, the city lives its own life. We remember the dead."
On August 17, 2009 at 8:13 a.m., workers in the engine room of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, Russia's largest hydroelectric power plant, heard a loud bang and then saw what was hard to believe. A multi-ton turbine literally took off on a column of water, destroying the ceilings of the building. Over the next few minutes, most of the interior of the station was rapidly flooded. Who (or what) is to blame for the deaths of 75 people - equipment defects or personnel negligence? We will tell you how a catastrophe of this magnitude could happen with the pride of the Soviet, and then the Russian energy industry.
In 1920, speaking at the Moscow Provincial Party Conference, V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin) uttered his sacramental thesis "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." Everything was more or less in order with the Soviet authorities by that year, but there were big problems with electricity. They escalated even more with the onset of industrialization: the explosively growing heavy industry was in desperate need of cheap electricity, and for this it was necessary to conquer rivers.
Although the first of the large stations - DneproGES - appeared before the Great Patriotic War, the construction of the hydroelectric power station, on a scale inherent in the Land of Soviets, really began after it ended. In a relatively short time, the main rivers of the European part of the country - the Dnieper, Volga, Kama, Don - were put at the service of man. But the main potential lay, of course, beyond the Urals, where Angara, Zeya, Bureya and, of course, the great Yenisei were waiting for their turn.
The Yenisei is an ideal river for the construction of hydroelectric power plants. At 3500 kilometers of its length, it repeatedly crosses various mountain ranges, where it is extremely convenient to build hydroelectric power stations in whole cascades. Particularly suitable conditions for this have developed in the so-called Sayan corridor - a narrow gorge in the ridges of the Western Sayan. Plans for its use for the benefit of the national economy began to be developed in the second half of the 1950s, and the first hydraulic engineers landed on the banks of the Yenisei in 1961. A year later, experts chose a specific place - the Karlovsky alignment of the Sayan Corridor, where in the future no less than the largest hydroelectric power station of the Soviet Union and one of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world was to appear.
The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP really appeared, but in order to understand the scale of the facility and the complexity of its construction, it is necessary to add: construction (from the start of preparatory work to acceptance into permanent operation) took 37 years! 37 years of almost continuous struggle with the harsh Siberian nature, climate, river, bureaucracy, interruptions in funding and constant emergencies. However, none of them even came close to being able to compare with what happened in August 2009.
The Yenisei was blocked by an arch-gravity dam, which had no analogues in the Soviet Union. In terms of its dimensions, it was a curved concrete trapezoid with a base width of more than 100 meters and a crest of 25 meters. The height of the dam was 242 meters, and the length along the ridge was more than a kilometer. Thousands of builders, engineers, geologists, power engineers have done tremendous work to tame the great Siberian river. The cofferdam they created, which took more than 9 million cubic meters of concrete, can withstand a pressure of 18 million tons of water from the created reservoir at a high water level.
The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is able to withstand such a fantastic load thanks to its design. The stability of the dam (which is why its type is called arch gravity) is achieved by a combination of two factors: its monstrous weight and arch geometry, which distributes the load on the load-bearing walls. The rocky shores of the Sayan corridor act as the latter. It was the presence of suitable natural conditions that made it possible to build such a powerful hydroelectric power station in this place.
How does a hydroelectric power plant work? Water enters the conduits located in the dam, and through them enters the blades of a hydro turbine, which drives generators that produce electricity. At the Sayano-Shushenskaya station there are 10 water conduits and, accordingly, 10 hydroelectric units with a capacity of 640 MW each. Thus, the total installed capacity of this HPP is 6,400 MW, and according to this indicator, it has not been and is not equal to it in the territory of the former Soviet Union.
And yet, it was on this energy giant, the great construction site of communism, which was built with the efforts of literally the entire country for several decades, that it became possible, moreover, a tragedy occurred that turned out to be one of the largest in the hydropower industry of the whole world.
The chain of events that led to the disaster on this summer day in 2009 took seconds.
“... I was standing at the top, I heard some kind of growing noise, then I saw how the corrugated coating of the hydraulic unit was rising, rearing up. Then I saw how the rotor rises from under it. He was spinning. My eyes didn't believe it. He climbed three meters. Stones flew, pieces of reinforcement, we began to dodge them ... The corrugation was already somewhere under the roof, and the roof itself was blown ... "- said in an interview with "Kommersant" one of the eyewitnesses of the accident.
The emotions of the station employee can be understood. It is difficult, unthinkable to imagine how, right in front of you, a massive, multi-ton unit pulls out of the engine room shaft and, like a match, raises a column of water into the air.
On the territory of the HPP building, where all 10 hydroelectric units were located, there were 116 people, 52 of them - at the level of the turbine hall floor, 63 - in the internal premises at the lower levels (another 1 person worked on the roof). Most of them carried out repairs of hydroelectric unit No. 6 that was not functioning at the time of the disaster. At 8:13 there was, in the dry words of the technical report, "the sudden destruction of hydroelectric unit No. 2." Its fragments and parts of the mechanism destroyed the walls and the ceiling of the engine room. What this shrapnel did not do was completed by the Yenisei that broke free.
Dozens, hundreds of cubic meters of water that entered the engine room every second quickly flooded the remaining hydraulic units and, most importantly, the interior of the engine room. The people who were there had practically no chance of escaping. At the same time, short circuits occurred at the still working, but flooded hydraulic units. They stopped working, which led to the de-energization of the entire station. In turn, the automatic systems, which were supposed to block the access of water to the hydroelectric units in the event of an emergency, worked only on one of them. Water continued to flow to the rest of the turbines through the conduits, which ultimately led to damage to some and destruction of others.
In order to stop the flow of water into the dilapidated turbine hall in the absence of electricity, the employees of the hydroelectric power station were forced to manually reset the gates of the dam's intakes. This was done only at 9:20, more than an hour after the development of the catastrophic situation.
Immediately after this, a new threat arose, because the Yenisei was completely blocked. Fortunately, the overflow of the reservoir with the unpleasant prospect of water overflowing over the crest of the dam and even its possible destruction, which could lead to a completely incredible cataclysm, was avoided. At 11:32, with the help of a special diesel generator, it was possible to supply current to the gantry crane and open the gates of a special spillway. The initial threats were eliminated. Now the station staff had the task of finding out the causes of the accident, and the rescuers were looking for survivors.
Unfortunately, due to the almost instantaneous development of the disaster, the employees of the HPP, who were in the internal premises of the turbine hall, had practically no chance. Rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations managed to find only two people who were in air bags. In total, as a result of the tragedy, 75 people died, another 13 received injuries of varying severity.
What is the reason for what, it seemed, should never have happened at an object of such scale and such strategic importance? The hydroelectric turbines used at the station had a major drawback. Two zones of their permitted operation (a zone is a certain combination of turbine power and water pressure) were separated by a zone not recommended for operation. In this mode, increased noise and vibration occurred in the turbine. The problem was that, each time switching between the zones of permitted operation with an increase or decrease in their power, the hydroelectric units of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP were forced (albeit for a short time) to find themselves in an unrecommended zone, being subjected to additional vibrations.
In hydraulic unit No. 2, these vibrations, due to which fatigue deformations accumulated in the metal studs holding the turbine cover, exceeded a certain critical threshold on the morning of August 17th. At 8:13, with the next decrease in the power of the unit (and, accordingly, with the next increase in vibration), a significant number of studs simply suddenly collapsed at the same time. The remaining attachment points could no longer withstand the pressure of water. The cover of the turbine was torn off, the turbine itself was thrown into the engine room by pressure, after which tens and tens of cubic meters of water began to flow through the shaft into the building of the hydroelectric power station. The flooding happened quickly.
This is the direct cause of the disaster, voiced in the official report of the technical commission investigating the accident. The specific perpetrators of the tragedy were also identified there. The matter did not end with complaints about the imperfection of the design of hydroelectric units. The experts drew attention to the blatant, from their point of view, negligence of the management of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP and the station personnel, who actually ignored the fact of increased vibrations in hydroelectric unit No. 2 and in no way controlled the accumulation of fatigue changes in the attachment points of its turbine cover. The defendants in the case of the events of August 17 were named seven people from the management of the station and the monitoring service of its equipment. At the end of 2014, four of them - the former director of the hydroelectric power station, the chief engineer and his two deputies - received real prison terms.
All of them pleaded not guilty to the incident. For example, the convicted director of the station believes that the cause of the disaster was the production of a turbine. This could be regarded as a natural attempt in his situation to evade responsibility by shifting it to the conscience of others, but many independent experts, including those with extensive experience in hydropower, also pointed out obvious inconsistencies in the report of the technical commission.
These experts note that there were no vibrations in hydroelectric unit No. 2 that would exceed the values allowed by the regulations for its operation. They were fixed by only one sensor of many, moreover, faulty. In the same way, for some reason, not a single regulatory document required a mandatory flaw detection of the turbine cover studs. The staff simply could not know that critical fatigue changes had appeared in them.
It sounds incredible, but the vibration control systems on the covers of the hydraulic units in the engine room were installed only after this disaster. Before the tragic death of 75 people, it turns out that no one was interested in how the operation of a mechanism weighing one and a half thousand tons affects this very cover. Only after the tragedy of August 2009 did it become clear that all the automation that controls the operation of the colossal power plant could be destroyed within a few seconds - simply flooded with water that caused short circuits. At the same time, there was no backup power supply in principle, and the gates, which ultimately blocked the access of water to the water conduits, and from there to the turbine hall of the hydroelectric power station, had to be manually reset.
It took a whole hour. For a whole hour, the Yenisei continued to flood the station building, flood its premises, and kill people only because the design of the hydroelectric power station did not provide for a reliable backup of its power supply. After all, so many people died not at all due to the fact that hydraulic unit No. 2 was thrown out of its mine, but because it was not possible to quickly stop the access of water to the turbine hall.
Boris Yurkevich, Chief Engineer of the Lengidroproekt Institute that designed the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, speaking at the All-Russian Conference of Hydropower Engineers a few months after the disaster, said: “The peculiarity of this accident, which put a lot of psychological pressure on all of us, is that it happened under normal conditions. It happened when everything worked properly, the repair regulations were followed, and the operating requirements were met. No one violated anything, the station fully complied with all norms and requirements, the operating personnel complied with all prescribed regulations. Literally in a second, all defense systems were destroyed. Drove, no holes, nothing. Then once - and fell apart. That's what happened here."
Now all the bottlenecks that made possible the tragedy that happened “in normal mode” have, of course, been eliminated, including at other Russian hydroelectric power plants. The vibration of the turbines is tightly controlled, the studs of their covers undergo regular flaw detection, and the power supply of the HPP is repeatedly backed up. Now the "car" just can not fall apart. The only scary thing is that 75 human lives had to be sacrificed for this.
Station diagram
The Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station on the Yenisei River is the largest hydroelectric power station in Russia and one of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world. It is located on the border of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and Khakassia. The construction of the HPP began in 1968, the first hydroelectric unit was put into operation in 1978, the last in 1985. The power plant was put into permanent operation in 2000 . Technically, the HPP consists of a concrete arch-gravity dam 245 m high and a hydroelectric dam building, which houses 10 radial-axial hydroelectric units with a capacity of 640 MW each. The installed capacity of HPPs is 6400 MW, the average annual output is 22.8 billion kWh. The HPP dam forms a large seasonally regulated Sayano-Shushenskoye reservoir. Downstream of the Yenisei is the counter-regulating Mainskaya HPP, which, with the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, forms a single production complex. The HPP facilities were designed by the Lenhydroproekt Institute, the hydraulic power equipment was supplied by the LMZ and Electrosila plants (now part of the Power Machines concern). The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is owned by JSC RusHydro.
Catastrophe
| External video files | |
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| Video recording of the accident. | |
| Surveillance camera filming. | |
At the time of the accident, the station carried a load of 4100 MW, out of 10 hydroelectric units, 9 were in operation (hydraulic unit No. 6 was under repair). At 8:13 local time on August 17, 2009 there was a sudden destruction of the hydraulic unit No. 2 with the flow of significant volumes of water through the shaft of the hydraulic unit under high pressure. The power plant personnel, who were in the engine room, heard a loud bang in the area of hydroelectric unit No. 2 and saw the release of a powerful column of water. Oleg Myakishev, an eyewitness to the accident, describes this moment as follows:
| ... I was standing at the top, I heard some kind of growing noise, then I saw how the corrugated coating of the hydroelectric unit was rising, rearing up. Then I saw how the rotor rises from under it. He was spinning. My eyes didn't believe it. He climbed three meters. Stones, pieces of reinforcement flew, we began to dodge them ... The corrugation was already somewhere under the roof, and the roof itself was blown ... I figured: water was rising, 380 cubic meters per second, and - tear, in the direction of the tenth unit. I thought I wouldn’t make it, I climbed higher, stopped, looked down - I see how everything collapses, the water rises, people try to swim ... I thought that the gates should be closed urgently, manually, to stop the water ... Manually, because there is no voltage, no protection worked... |
Streams of water quickly flooded the engine room and the rooms below it. All hydraulic units of the hydroelectric power station were flooded, while short circuits occurred on the working hydroelectric generators (their flashes are clearly visible on the amateur video of the disaster), which put them out of action. There was a complete load shedding of the hydroelectric power station, which led, among other things, to a de-energization of the station itself. A light and sound alarm went off at the station's central control panel, after which the control was de-energized - operational communications, power supply to lighting, automation and signaling devices were lost. The automatic systems that stop the hydraulic units worked only on the hydraulic unit No. 5, the guide vane of which was automatically closed. The gates at the water intakes of other hydraulic units remained open, and water continued to flow through the water lines to the turbines, which led to the destruction of hydraulic units No. 7 and 9 (the stators and crosses of the generators were badly damaged). Water flows and flying fragments of hydraulic units completely destroyed the walls and ceilings of the turbine hall in the area of hydraulic aggregates No. 2, 3, 4. Hydroaggregates No. 3, 4 and 5 were littered with fragments of the turbine hall. Those employees of the station who had such an opportunity quickly left the scene of the accident.
At the time of the accident, the chief engineer of the HPP A.N. Mitrofanov, the acting chief of staff of the Civil Defense and Emergency Situations M.I. Chiglintsev, the head of the equipment monitoring service A.V. Matvienko, the head of the reliability and safety service N. V. Churichkov. After the accident, the chief engineer arrived at the central control point and gave the order to the station shift supervisor M. G. Nefyodov, who was there, to close the gates. Chiglintsev, Matvienko and Churichkov left the territory of the station after the accident.
Due to the loss of power supply, the gates could only be closed manually, for which the personnel had to enter a special room on the crest of the dam. At about 08:30, eight operational personnel reached the shutter room, after which they contacted the station shift supervisor by cell phone, who instructed the shutters to be lowered. Having broken the iron door, the station workers A. V. Kataytsev, R. Gaifullin, E. V. Kondrattsev, I. M. Bagautdinov, P. A. Mayoroshin and N. N. Tretyakov manually reset the emergency repair gates of water intakes within an hour by stopping the flow of water into the engine room. The closure of water conduits led to the need to open the gates of the spillway dam in order to ensure sanitary release in the downstream of the SSHPP. By 11:32 a.m., the gantry crane of the crest of the dam was powered by a mobile diesel generator, at 11:50 a.m. the gate lifting operation began. By 13:07, all 11 gates of the spillway dam were open, and empty water flow began.
Rescue work
Search and rescue, repair and restoration work at the station began almost immediately after the accident by the station personnel and employees of the Siberian Regional Center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. On the same day, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergey Shoigu, flew to the area of the accident, who led the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident, the transfer of additional forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and employees of various divisions of JSC RusHydro began. Already on the day of the accident, diving work began to inspect the flooded premises of the station in order to search for survivors, as well as the bodies of the dead. On the first day after the accident, it was possible to save two people who were in "air bags" and gave signals for help - one 2 hours after the accident, the other 15 hours later. However, as early as August 18, the likelihood of finding other survivors was assessed as negligible. On August 20, pumping out of water from the premises of the engine room began; by this time, 17 bodies of the dead had been found, 58 people were listed as missing. As the internal premises of the station were freed from water, the number of found bodies of the dead grew rapidly, reaching 69 people by August 23, when work on pumping water entered the final stage. On August 23, the Ministry of Emergency Situations began to complete its work at the station, and work at the hydroelectric power station began to gradually move from the phase of a search and rescue operation to the phase of restoration of structures and equipment. On August 28, the state of emergency introduced in connection with the accident was canceled in Khakassia. In total, up to 2,700 people were involved in search and rescue operations (of which about 2,000 people worked directly at the HPP) and more than 200 pieces of equipment. During the work, more than 5,000 m³ of debris was dismantled and removed, more than 277,000 m³ of water was pumped out of the station premises. In order to eliminate oil pollution in the waters of the Yenisei, 9683 meters of booms were installed and 324.2 tons of oil-containing emulsion were collected.
Investigation of the causes of the accident
The investigation into the causes of the accident was carried out independently by various departments. Immediately after the accident, a Rostekhnadzor commission was created, an investigation committee under the prosecutor's office began its investigation as part of an initiated criminal case under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (violation of labor protection rules). On September 16, the State Duma created a parliamentary commission to investigate the causes of the accident, led by V. A. Pekhtin. The non-obviousness of the causes of the accident (according to the Minister of Energy of Russia S. I. Shmatko, “this is the largest and most incomprehensible hydropower accident that has ever been in the world”) caused the emergence of a number of versions that did not find their confirmation in the future. Immediately after the accident, a version of the water hammer was voiced, and there were also suggestions about the explosion of the transformer. The version of a terrorist act was also considered - in particular, one of the groups of Chechen separatists posted a statement stating that the accident was the result of sabotage; however, no traces of explosives were found at the crash site. The Rostekhnadzor Commission initially planned to announce the causes of the accident and the amount of damage caused by September 15, but the final meeting of the commission was first postponed to September 17 due to "the need to further clarify certain technological aspects in the draft final act of the commission", and then postponed for another 10 days. "The act of technical investigation of the causes of the accident..." was published on October 3, 2009. The report of the parliamentary commission investigating the circumstances of the accident was presented on 21 December 2009. The investigation, conducted by the Investigative Committee, was completed on March 23, 2011.
Causes of the accident
The results of the investigation of the accident by the Rostekhnadzor commission were published on the website of the department in the form of a document under the official title "Act of the technical investigation of the causes of the accident that occurred on August 17, 2009 at the branch of the Open Joint Stock Company RusHydro - Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP named after P. S. Neporozhny" . The act provides general information about the hydroelectric power plant, lists the events that preceded the accident, describes the course of the accident, lists the causes and events that influenced the development of the accident. The immediate cause of the accident by this act was formulated as follows:
| Due to the repeated occurrence of additional loads of a variable nature on the hydraulic unit associated with crossings through a non-recommended zone, fatigue damage was formed and developed on the attachment points of the hydraulic unit, including the turbine cover. The destruction of the studs caused by dynamic loads led to the failure of the turbine cover and the depressurization of the water supply path of the hydraulic unit.
original text(Russian) [...] The accident at hydroelectric unit No. 2 (destruction of a specific technical device) occurred at the time of the turbine cover failure due to a break in the cover fastening pins. As a result of a visual inspection of 49 studs for fastening the turbine cover of hydroelectric unit No. 2, two zones were identified in the stud fractures: the fatigue fracture zone and the fracture zone (letter 23.09.2009 No. 41 studs failed along the thread with fatigue fracture areas:
Two studs failed without signs of fatigue failure by the static break mechanism. The remaining 6 studs are full length, the thread is not stripped, which may indicate the absence of nuts on them at the time of turbine failure. The length of the undamaged stud is 245 mm and corresponds to that specified in the drawing. |
The parliamentary commission, the results of which were published on December 21, 2009 under the official title "Final Report of the Parliamentary Commission on Investigation of the Circumstances Related to the Emergence of a Man-made Emergency at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP on August 17, 2009", formulated the causes of the accident as follows:
| The accident at the SSHHPP with numerous human casualties was the result of a number of reasons of a technical, organizational and regulatory legal nature. Most of these reasons are systemic and multifactorial in nature, including the unacceptably low responsibility of the operating personnel, the unacceptably low responsibility and professionalism of the plant management, and the abuse of power by the plant management.
The constant monitoring of the technical condition of the equipment by the operational and maintenance personnel was not properly organized (which should be provided for in the operating instructions for the hydroelectric units of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, approved by the chief engineer of the SSHHPP dated May 18, 2009). The main cause of the accident was the failure to take measures to promptly shut down the second hydraulic unit and find out the causes of vibration. |
Prerequisites
Operating zones of hydroelectric units of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP
Changes in the readings of the sensor of radial vibrations of the bearing of the turbine of the hydraulic unit No. 2
Hydroelectric unit No. 2 underwent the last overhaul in 2005, its last average repair was carried out in the period from January 14 to March 16, 2009. After the repair, the hydraulic unit was put into permanent operation; at the same time, increased vibrations of the equipment were recorded, which, nevertheless, remained within the limits of permissible values. During the operation of the hydraulic unit, its vibration state gradually worsened and at the end of June 2009 it passed the permissible level. The deterioration continued in the future; so, by 8:00 am on August 17, 2009, the vibration amplitude of the turbine cover bearing was 600 µm, with the maximum allowable 160 µm; at 8:13, just before the accident, it increased to 840 microns. In such a situation, the chief engineer of the plant, in accordance with regulatory documents, was obliged to stop the hydraulic unit in order to find out the causes of increased vibration, which was not done, which was one of the main reasons for the development of the accident. The continuous vibration monitoring system installed at hydroelectric unit No. 2 in 2009 was not put into operation and was not taken into account by the operating personnel and the plant management when making decisions.
The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, like other large hydroelectric power plants, played an important role in the system of automatic control of the mode of power systems in terms of frequency and power flows (ARChM) of the United Energy System of Siberia and was equipped with a group control system of active and reactive power (GRARM), which allowed in automatic mode change the load on hydroelectric units depending on the current needs of the power system. The GRARM algorithm of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP provided for the inadmissibility of the operation of hydraulic units in a zone not recommended for operation, but did not limit the number of passages of hydraulic units through this zone in the process of changing their power according to GRARM commands. In 2009, hydroelectric unit No. 2 passed through the zone of non-recommended work 232 times, being in it for a total of 46 minutes (for comparison, hydroelectric unit No. 4 made 490 passes through the zone of non-recommended work during the same period of time, having worked in it for 1 hour 38 minutes ). It should be noted that the operation of hydraulic units in the zone not recommended for operation was not prohibited by the turbine manufacturer, and there were also no restrictions on the passage of hydraulic units through this zone.
Development of the accident
Hydroelectric unit No. 2 was put into operation from the reserve at 23:14 local time (19:14 Moscow time) on August 16, 2009 and was assigned by the plant personnel as a priority for changing the load when the power control ranges were exhausted. The change in the power of the hydraulic unit was carried out automatically under the influence of the GRARM regulator in accordance with the commands of the ARCM. At that moment, the station was operating according to the planned dispatch schedule. At 20:20 Moscow time, a fire was recorded in one of the premises of the Bratsk HPP, as a result of which the communication lines between the Bratsk HPP and the dispatching office of the Siberian energy system were damaged (a number of media hastened to declare these events the “trigger” of the disaster, which forced the launch of the ill-fated hydroelectric unit No. 2, overlooking the fact that by this point it was already in the works). Since the Bratskaya HPP, operating under the control of the ARCM, "fell" out of control of the system, the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP took over its role, and at 20:31 Moscow time the dispatcher gave the command to transfer the GRARM station to the automatic control mode from the ARCM. In total, 6 hydraulic units (No. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 9) worked under the control of GRARM, three more hydro units (No. 3, 8 and 10) worked under the individual control of the personnel, hydro unit No. 6 was under repair.
From 08:12 there was a decrease in the capacity of hydroelectric unit No. 2 at the direction of GRARM. When the hydraulic unit entered the zone not recommended for operation, the turbine cover studs broke. The destruction of a significant part of the 80 studs was due to fatigue phenomena; at the time of the accident, six studs (out of 41 examined) were missing nuts - probably due to self-loosening as a result of vibration (their locking was not provided for by the turbine design). Under the influence of water pressure in the hydraulic unit, the rotor of the hydraulic unit with the turbine cover and the upper cross began to move upward, and, due to depressurization, water began to fill the volume of the turbine shaft, acting on the elements of the generator. When the impeller rim reached the level of 314.6 m, the impeller switched to the pumping mode and, due to the stored energy of the generator rotor, created excess pressure on the leading edges of the impeller blades, which led to the breakage of the guide vane blades. Through the vacated shaft of the hydraulic unit, water began to flow into the machine room of the station. The automatic control systems of hydroelectric units, which stop them in case of emergency, could only function if there was power supply, but in the conditions of flooding of the turbine hall and a massive short circuit of electrical equipment, the power supply to the station itself was lost very quickly, and the automation managed to stop only one hydroelectric unit - No. 5. Water inflow to the turbine hall of the station continued until the manual closing of the emergency gates by the station personnel from the crest of the dam, which was completed by 9.30.
According to the head of Rostekhnadzor N.G. Kutyin, a similar accident associated with the destruction of the hydraulic unit cover fasteners (but without human casualties) already happened in 1983 at the Nurek hydroelectric power station in Tajikistan, but the USSR Ministry of Energy decided to classify information about that incident.
Alleged perpetrators
The act of the Rostekhnadzor commission lists six officials involved, in its opinion, "in creating conditions conducive to the occurrence of an accident", including the former head of RAO UES of Russia A. B. Chubais, the former technical director of RAO UES of Russia B. F. Vainzikher, former head of JSC RusHydro V. Yu. Sinyugin and former Minister of Energy I. Kh. Yusufov. In addition, the act contains the names of 19 officials "responsible for preventing incidents and accidents at the plant", and lists the violations identified by the commission in the exercise of their official duties. Among these persons are the management of JSC RusHydro, headed by the acting chairman of the board V. A. Zubakin, as well as the management of the HPP, headed by its director N. I. Nevolko. On August 28, 2009, N. I. Nevolko was removed from the post of director of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, on October 26, 2009, the board of directors of JSC RusHydro terminated the powers of S. A. Yushin (financial director of the company) and A. V. Toloshinov ( head of the Siberia division of the company, former director of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP). On November 23, 2009, the powers of V. A. Zubakin, acting chairman of the company's board, as well as 4 members of the company's board, were terminated. E. V. Dod, who previously headed JSC Inter RAO UES, was elected the new head of JSC RusHydro. In the report of the parliamentary commission, 19 people were named as involved in the accident, including 10 people representing the management of the station, 5 people who were members of the management of JSC RusHydro, 2 officials of Rostekhnadzor, as well as the heads of OOO Rakurs and OOO Promavtomatika who carried out work on the creation and installation of control systems for hydroelectric units. On December 16, 2010, the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee charged the former director of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP; On March 23, 2011, the Investigative Committee announced the completion of the investigation. 162 people were recognized as victims in the case. The investigation filed charges under article 143 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (violation of safety regulations and other labor protection rules, committed by a person who was responsible for observing these rules, which negligently resulted in the death of two or more persons):
- former director of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP Nikolai Nevolko;
- First Deputy Director - Chief Engineer of the station Andrey Mitrofanov;
- Gennady Nikitenko, Deputy Chief Engineer for the technical part of the station;
- former Deputy Chief Engineer for Station Operation Yevgeny Shervarli;
- Alexander Matviyenko, Head of Station Equipment Monitoring Service;
- Vladimir Beloborodov, Leading Engineer for Commissioning and Testing of the Monitoring Service (former Head of the Technical Diagnostics Laboratory) of the station;
- to the leading engineer of the equipment monitoring section of the equipment monitoring service (former leading engineer of the technical diagnostics laboratory - group of vibration and strength measurements) of the station Alexander Klyukach.
Criticism of the official version of the causes of the accident
Some of the conclusions set out in the act of the commission of Rostekhnadzor are criticized by a number of experts as unfounded. In particular, it is noted that the conclusion about the unacceptable vibration level of hydraulic unit No. 2 is based on the readings of only one sensor (TP R NB), which cannot be considered reliable, since this sensor showed exorbitant vibrations even when the hydraulic unit was stopped, which indicates a sensor malfunction. Nine other vibration sensors installed at hydroelectric unit No. 2 did not record increased vibration, but their readings were not given in the Rostekhnadzor act. The normal vibration state of hydraulic unit No. 2 before the accident is confirmed by data from an automatic seismometric station located on the dam of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP. Specialists CKTI them. II Polzunov, the leading scientific and technical institute in Russia in the field of hydropower equipment, concluded that the passages of hydroelectric unit No. 2 through a non-recommended zone could not serve as a direct cause of the destruction of the studs.
It should be noted that the act of Rostekhnadzor was signed by two members of the commission (Khaziakhmetov R. M. and Meteleva T. G.) with dissenting opinions that were not published.
Chief Engineer of the Institute "Lengidroproekt" (general designer of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP) Ph.D. n. B. N. Yurkevich at the IV All-Russian Conference of Hydropower Engineers (Moscow, February 25-27, 2010) stated the following:
The peculiarity of this accident, which had a very strong psychological impact on all of us, is that it occurred under normal conditions. It happened when everything worked properly, the repair regulations were followed, and the operating requirements were met. No one violated anything, the station fully complied with all norms and requirements, the operating personnel complied with all prescribed regulations.
At the end of June 2012, a few days after the announcement of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as the Investigative Committee) on the completion of investigative measures in the criminal case of the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, the press service of RusHydro issued the following statement:
We are aware of the conclusions of the TFR, formed on the basis of the results of the investigation. The company previously received for review the results of a comprehensive technical expertise (CTE), commissioned by the Investigative Committee by the Center for Independent Forensic Expertise of the Russian Environmental Fund TECHEKO.
In the course of studying the CHP, RusHydro's technical experts concluded that the factors identified in this document as the causes of the accident are ambiguous. ... We believe that a professional look at the problem will clearly determine the causes of what happened ...
At the same time, KHPP sets out an approach to the causes of the accident, which is considered to be official.
In this regard, it should be mentioned that during the first year that has passed since the Sayan catastrophe, Ph.D. n. Yuri Lobanovsky for its explanation, as a development of the ideas of Dr. F.-M. n. Valery Okulov, the theory of hydroacoustic excitation of self-oscillations of pressure systems of hydroelectric power plants was created. Its main provisions and results of application not only to the events that occurred at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, but also to similar incidents at other hydroelectric power plants are briefly described below.
According to the theory of Yu. I. Lobanovsky, the separation of the turbine cover of the second hydroelectric unit of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP and the ejection of its central unit to a height of about 14 meters occurred as a result of a catastrophic increase in pressure pulsations in the water conduit of the hydroelectric unit. The pulsations arose as a result of the excitation of self-oscillations in the water conduit by a precessing out-of-turbine vortex (that is, a vortex whose axis of rotation rotates itself). Then this first self-oscillatory process initiated a second, more powerful one, the development of which, as a result, led to a catastrophe. Such a scenario describes everything that happened at the time of the catastrophe, and is fully consistent with the phenomena observed there.
According to the author of the theory, the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is the most famous incident of this kind, but it was not the first. 5 more hydro- and hydroaccumulating stations are known, in the water conduits of which either self-oscillations were excited, or balancing took place at the very border of this dangerous phenomenon. In particular, similar processes were observed three times at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. The application of the theory of hydroacoustic excitation of self-oscillations and the purposeful collection of information on various strange and obscure incidents with detachment of turbine covers of hydroelectric units, as well as the occurrence of very strong vibrations that do not allow for the normal operation of these units, made it possible to fully understand the details of what happened to the second hydroelectric unit SSH HPP August 17, 2009.
Lobanovsky outlined his arguments in a number of works. The result is summed up in the article "The Threat to the Chosen Ones", and a more detailed justification of the proposed approach is described in the work "Hydroacoustic excitation of the pressure system of the second hydraulic unit of the SSH HPP - the cause of the Sayan catastrophe". Two articles were published in the specialized journal "Hydrotechnical construction": "Auto-oscillations of pressure systems and the destruction of hydroelectric units" and "On the calculations of the hydroacoustic stability of Yali, Teri and Irganai hydroelectric power plants" . The results of the research were reported in the report "Hydroacoustics of the water conduit / turbine system and the safety of HPPs and PSPPs" at a scientific and practical conference within the framework of the International Congress "Fuel and Energy Complex of Russia: the priority vector of development is safety."
At the same time, the conclusions of Lobanovsky, who had not previously been involved in research in the field of hydropower, are criticized by some specialized experts as unfounded, primarily by B.N. Yurkevich, the chief engineer of Lenhydroproekt OJSC, where the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP was designed. He wrote a review of an article by Yu. I. Lobanovsky in the journal "Hydrotechnical Construction" about self-oscillations in pressure systems. Lobanovsky, in turn, wrote a response to Yurkevich's review, in which he criticized his conclusions.
Effects
Social Consequences
At the time of the accident, there were 116 people in the turbine hall of the station, including one person on the roof of the hall, 52 people on the hall floor (327 m mark) and 63 people in the interior below the hall floor level (at elevations of 315 and 320 m). Of these, 15 people were employees of the station, the rest were employees of various contracting organizations that carried out repair work (most of them were employees of OJSC Sayano-Shushensky Hydroenergoremont). In total, there were about 300 people on the territory of the station (including outside the zone affected by the accident). As a result of the accident, 75 people died and 13 people were injured. The body of the last deceased was found on September 23 . with an indication of the places where the bodies were found was published in the act of the technical investigation of the commission of Rostekhnadzor. The large number of deaths is explained by the fact that most people were in the internal premises of the station below the floor level of the turbine hall and the rapid flooding of these premises.
From the first day of the accident, estimates of the chances of survival of people who could be inside the water-flooded turbine hall were disappointing. In particular, a member of the board of the RusHydro company, the former general director of the HPP, Alexander Toloshinov, said:
The lack of official information about the accident and the state of the dam during the first hours, interruptions in communications, and, later, mistrust of the statements of local authorities, based on experience, caused panic in the settlements lying downstream of the river - Cheryomushki, Sayanogorsk, Abakan, Minusinsk . Residents hurriedly left to stay with relatives, away from the dam, and to nearby higher ground, leading to many queues at gas stations, traffic jams, and car accidents. According to Sergei Shoigu,
| Gasoline prices jumped twice, people began to pick up children from kindergartens, from pioneer camps, fill up all the canisters that were in the house with gasoline, buy groceries and essentials in stores.<…>Well, as far as gas stations are concerned, we will, of course, deal with this separately, who warmed their hands on this. This means that, as far as food and basic necessities are concerned, I think it will also be necessary to sort it out, and they are already sorting it out. |
In this regard, the Khakass Department of the Federal Antimonopoly Service conducted an inspection of gasoline prices, which did not reveal an increase.
Compensation and social assistance
Financial assistance to the families of the victims was provided from various sources. RusHydro made payments in the amount of 1 million rubles to the families of each of the victims, separately paid two months' wages for the victims, and allocated funds for organizing the funeral. Those who survived but were injured in the accident received lump-sum payments ranging from 50,000 to 150,000 rubles, depending on the severity of the damage. The company is working to provide housing for families in need, and also implements other social programs to help the families of the victims. In total, the company allocated 185 million rubles for social assistance programs.
The family of each deceased was given compensation in the amount of 1.1 million rubles additionally from the federal budget.
As part of its own charitable program, Sberbank of Russia undertook to repay mortgage loans to the families of the victims for a total of 6 million rubles.
Environmental consequences
The accident had a negative impact on the environment: oil from the lubrication baths of hydraulic unit thrust bearings, from the destroyed control systems of guide vanes and transformers got into the Yenisei, the resulting slick stretched for 130 km. The total volume of oil leaks from the station equipment amounted to 436.5 m³, of which approximately 45 m³, mainly turbine oil, entered the river. In order to prevent further spread of oil along the river, booms were installed; to facilitate the collection of oil, a special sorbent was used, but it was not possible to promptly stop the distribution of oil products; The spot was completely eliminated only on August 24, and it was planned to complete the coastal cleanup by December 31, 2009. Water pollution with oil products has led to the death of about 400 tons of industrial trout in fish farms located downstream of the river; there were no facts of fish death in the Yenisei itself. The total amount of environmental damage is tentatively estimated at 63 million rubles.
Economic consequences
Damage to structures and equipment of the power plant
As a result of the accident, hydraulic unit No. 2 was completely destroyed and thrown out of the shaft, and the shaft of the hydraulic unit was also destroyed. At hydraulic units No. 7 and No. 9, generators were destroyed. Other hydraulic units also received significant damage. The walls and roof of the machine room were destroyed in the area of hydraulic units No. 2, 3, 4. In the area of hydro units No. 2, 7, 9, the overlap of the machine room was destroyed. Other equipment of the station, located in and near the engine room, received varying degrees of damage - transformers, cranes, elevators, and electrical equipment. The total losses associated with equipment damage are estimated at 7 billion rubles. According to the Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Sergey Shmatko, the cost of restoring the SSHPP may exceed 40 billion rubles. "Only the turbine hall will be largely replaced - by about 90% - the cost will be up to 40 billion rubles," he said. The Minister stressed that the restoration of the HPP is in any case beneficial, since the dam, which was not damaged in the accident, is 80% of the total cost of the plant. According to the management of JSC RusHydro, the full restoration of the station may take more than four years. The need to allocate funds for the restoration of the station led to the need to change the investment program of JSC RusHydro.
The property of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP was insured by ROSNO for $200 million, and employees were also insured by ROSNO for 500,000 rubles each. Property risks under this agreement are reinsured on the international market, mainly in Munich Re. The civil liability of the owner of the HPP, JSC RusHydro, was insured by AlfaStrakhovanie, the sum insured amounted to 30 million rubles. in all cases (according to the data given in the act of investigating the causes of the accident, civil liability was insured for a total of 78.1 million rubles).
Impact of the accident on the power system
As a result of the accident, a number of industrial enterprises were completely or partially disconnected from the power supply for a short time: the Sayan Aluminum Plant, the Khakass Aluminum Plant, the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, the Kuznetsk Ferroalloy Plant, the Novokuznetsk Aluminum Plant, a number of coal mines and cuts; power supply was disrupted, including social facilities and the population, in the Altai Territory, the Kemerovo Region, the Republic of Khakassia, the Novosibirsk Region, the Tomsk Region Siberia and the Central Dispatch Office, which quickly distributed the load between other power plants and involved transit from the combined energy systems of the Urals and the Middle Volga through the territory of Kazakhstan, managed to avoid a cascade shutdown and “redemption” of the IPS of Siberia, similar to, say, an accident in the energy system of the USA and Canada in 2003. In this regard, on September 14, President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev awarded the employees of the United Dispatch Control of Siberian Energy Systems "for conscientious, highly professional work during the accident and the post-accident period at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP" with a certificate of honor from the president. 8 hours after the accident, all restrictions were lifted due to the commissioning of reserve capacities at thermal power plants and an increase in the flow of electricity from the European part of the country. Until the completion of the restoration of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, the underproduction of electricity by it will be compensated by the increased load of thermal power plants, operating mainly on coal (in connection with which the volume of its transportation has significantly increased), by importing electricity from Kazakhstan, as well as due to the commissioning in 2011 of the first stage of the Boguchanskaya HPS.
The reaction of the stock markets
The announcement of the accident had a predictable impact on the company's share prices on Russian and foreign stock markets. On the day of the accident, August 17, trading in RusHydro shares on the Russian trading floors RTS and MICEX was suspended at the request of the company itself. This happened just a few minutes after the opening of trading, but during this time they managed to lose more than 7% of the cost. Depository receipts for RusHydro shares lost 14.8% on the London Stock Exchange. On August 18, RusHydro shares were not traded on Russian stock exchanges, and on August 19, after the resumption of trading, the company's shares fell by more than 10%.
Simultaneously with the fall in RusHydro's quotes, shares of electric power companies with generating capacities in Siberia began to rise, which, according to market participants, will be able to benefit from increased capacity utilization. As the power of Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP is expected to be replaced by electricity from more expensive thermal power plants, investors expect both growth in electricity prices in the region and growth in revenues of energy companies.
Ensuring the safety of hydroelectric power plants
External view of the dam
As a result of the failure of all units of the station and the blocking of water conduits, the culvert capacity of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP dam was reduced by 3600 m³ / s (10 units of 358.5 m³ / s each), which raises concerns about the safety of the passage of severe floods (subsequently, the launch of three hydroelectric units somewhat weakened, but did not eliminate these fears). To solve the problem, work on the construction of the onshore spillway of the hydroelectric power station was accelerated, for which 4.3 billion rubles were allocated from the federal budget. According to Yury Gorbenko, a member of the board of JSC RusHydro, the construction of the spillway was carried out around the clock; 36,000 m³ of concrete were laid per month. The first stage of the spillway was put into operation on June 1, 2010. In 2010, it was planned to spend 3.5 billion rubles on the construction of the spillway.
During the operation of a regular spillway, a cloud of water dust is formed; as the spillway had never been operated in winter prior to the accident, there were concerns that this could result in significant icing of the plant's structures. A number of measures have been taken to prevent this phenomenon.
According to Minister of Energy Sergey Shmatko, the government commission for the elimination of the consequences of the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP instructed JSC RusHydro to replace the fasteners of the turbine covers of high-pressure HPPs during scheduled preventive repairs. The Ministry of Energy, Rostekhnadzor, RusHydro and other organizations operating HPPs were also instructed to carry out a complete flaw detection of the fastenings of the turbine covers of hydroelectric power plants with the replacement of those unsuitable for use. HPPs must be provided with protective systems, sources of autonomous emergency power supply, as well as automatic recorders of the parameters of the equipment in operation (“black boxes”). The commission also instructed to analyze the compatibility of the System Operator's control devices with local HPP control systems, and the Ministry of Energy and Rostekhnadzor, together with the Russian Academy of Sciences, were instructed to prepare a comprehensive program to improve the safety of HPPs by December 2009. The Ministry of Energy should also submit proposals on the development of the regulatory framework of the Russian Federation to establish technical requirements for the subjects of the electric power industry necessary to regulate the flow of electricity and capacity.
Station recovery
Work on the restoration of the HPP began almost immediately after the accident. On August 19, 2009, the directorate for the elimination of the consequences of the accident was created, headed by the chief engineer of the station A. Mitrofanov. At the first stage of work, the main task was to restore the power supply to the station and clear the debris in the turbine hall. The rubble was completely dismantled by October 7 . On September 21, 2009, the restoration of the walls and roof of the turbine hall began, this work was supposed to be completed by November 11, according to the plan, but was completed ahead of schedule, on November 6. At the same time, work is underway to dismantle the most affected hydroelectric units; Of particular difficulty was the dismantling of the remains of hydroelectric unit No. 2, the completion of which was originally planned for the end of January 2010, but was actually completed only in April 2010.
Work on the restoration of the HPP is planned to be completed by December 2014. The plan for the restoration of the station includes the gradual replacement of all 10 hydroelectric units with new ones - of the same capacity, but with improved performance. New hydroelectric units will be manufactured by Power Machines - 6 units will be delivered in 2011, the remaining 4 - in 2012, the total cost of the contract for the supply of equipment amounted to 11.7 billion rubles.
In 2010, the least affected hydro units No. 3, 4, 5 and 6 were launched. The fifth hydro unit was put on idle on December 30, 2009; It is planned to completely dismantle hydroelectric unit No. 2 by March 1, to complete work on the seventh unit - by March 15, and on hydroelectric unit No. 9 - by April 30, 2010. Until the end of 2009, it was planned to start up hydroelectric unit No. 6 at idle to dry the generator insulation; the start-up was carried out on December 30, and on February 24, 2010, the unit was put into operation with the participation of V.V. Putin. On December 22, 2010, hydroelectric unit No. 3 was launched, the station's capacity reached 2560 MW.
Ratings
| What happened is a harbinger of what Russian leaders have long feared: the inexorable degradation of Soviet-era infrastructure. Everything - from power plants to ports and airports, from pipelines and railways to city thermal power plants and the Moscow metro - almost everything is in urgent need of repair.
original text(English) But the accident - apparently caused by a pressure surge in pipes - is also a harbinger of something Russia's leaders have long feared: the inexorable degradation of the Soviet-era infrastructure. From power stations to ports and airports, to pipelines and railways, through city heating plants and the Moscow metro - almost everything is in urgent need of renovation. |
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, at a meeting on the socio-economic development of the Siberian Federal District on August 24, 2009, called all statements about the onset of the so-called "technological collapse" in Russia "nonsense", but confirmed the conclusions of news agencies. On the topic of the accident, he said:
| …These tragic events should once again remind us of fairly simple things that we, unfortunately, often forget about - that security control systems, the infrastructure of Russian enterprises as a whole, require utmost attention at the moment. In a number of cases, this infrastructure is inefficient and needs to be urgently modernized, otherwise we will pay with the most difficult things. |
Notes
- Act of technical investigation of the causes of the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP. Rostekhnadzor (October 3, 2009). (unavailable link - story) Retrieved October 5, 2009.(unavailable link)(the file was originally posted at , then renamed "due to technical problems caused by a large number of hits to the site upon the publication of the Act"). The MD5 hash of the authentic file is 2E7E94FEBDA2D3E9F683B1AE7A79B426. .
- Causes of the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP. Conclusions of Rostekhnadzor. Main theses. vesti.ru (October 03, 2009). Archived from the original on 17 October 2012. Retrieved 10 September 2012.
- The accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station: parliamentarians will establish the causes. Interfax.ru (September 17, 2009). Retrieved October 24, 2009.
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