Blast near nuclear reactors in northwest Russia
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-17 11:49

One person was killed in an explosion near the Leningrad nuclear power plant in northwest Russia, but the blast posed no danger to the reactors.

A nuclear power plant in the northern Leningrad region. One person was killed in an explosion near the Leningrad nuclear power plant in northwest Russia, but the blast posed no danger to the reactors. [AFP]

"An explosion occurred on Friday at a company located far from the reactors and did not affect the power station's operation. No increase in radioactivity was noted," Russian Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Nikolai Shingarev told AFP on Friday.

Vladimir Vorobiyev, the regional representative of Russia's emergency situations ministry, said the blast went off in a nearby metal smelting facility, but not actually within the limits of the power station, which is located in the town of Sosnovyi Bor near Saint Petersburg.

Vorobiyev said three workers were burned, one of them later dying in hospital.

The Leningrad power station dates from 1973 and is equipped with the same type of Soviet-built reactor as that at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine which suffered a meltdown in 1986 in history's worst civilian nuclear disaster.