Accident occurs at the world's largest uranium enrichment plant in the Urals, Russia

In the terrorist state of the Russian Federation, at the Ural Electrochemical Plant in the city of Novouralsk, a cylinder containing depleted uranium hexafluoride was depressurized.

"In workshop 53 of the Ural Electrochemical Plant, a cylinder with depleted uranium hexafluoride with a volume of 1 cubic meter was depressurized. One person was injured," the company's press service reported.

Meanwhile, a source of the pro-Kremlin propaganda source RIA Novosti in the emergency services clarified that one person died as a result of "mechanical impact."

The Ural Electrochemical Plant is located in the city of Novouralsk (population: 78,000 people) in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. It is 40 km from Yekaterinburg.

The company emphasized that the situation is local and limited to the territory of the production site. The personnel of the workshop where the accident occurred were evacuated, and the accident site was sanitized. The radiation situation at the enterprise and outside is normal; there is no danger for residents of Novouralsk and the plant's personnel, the press service added.

At the same time, the local Uralsky Meridian news agency reported that after the explosion of a balloon in the workshop of the Ural Electrochemical Plant, more than a hundred workers of the workshop were urgently examined in the hospital of Novouralsk, people may have been poisoned. For the examination in the Novouralsk medical institution, all personnel will be involved, including those who will be called in from days off and vacations, sources in the city told the Ural mass media.

And the mayor of Novouralsk urged residents "not to panic."

The Ural Electrochemical Plant is part of the Russian state corporation Rosatom. It is the world's largest enterprise for the enrichment of uranium, which is supplied to meet the needs of nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants and other nuclear power plants.

48% of the distribution capacities of Russia are concentrated in the technological buildings of UEHK. During uranium enrichment, depleted uranium hexafluoride is formed. It does not pose a radiation hazard - its radioactivity is lower than that of natural uranium.

Depleted uranium hexafluoride is a product of processing uranium hexafluoride into enriched uranium, which is stored at production sites in Novouralsk, Zelenogorsk, Siversk, and Angarsk. It can be used for the enrichment and production of fuel and fluorine. In other industries, it is used to produce screens for medical equipment to protect against X-ray and gamma radiation, counterweights and gyroscopes in aircraft and shipbuilding, catalysts for some chemical reactions, and as an alloying additive for steel.

"The activity of depleted uranium is lower than that of natural uranium ore," notes the management of the plant where the extraordinary event occurred.