Arrêt en septembre 1992 d’un réacteur souterrain à Krasnoyarsk-26, un des sites russes de production du plutonium de qualité militaire.
Krasnoïarsk-26 (maintenant Zelenogorsk) au bord du Iénisseï est associé à une ville de 90 300 habitants. Creusé à 250 m de profondeur au début des années 1950 par des détenus, dans la rive du Ienisseï (7 millions de m3 de volume, soit trois fois et demie le volume de la pyramide de Chéops). Une centaine de milliers d’ouvriers qualifiés ont ensuite, en trois ans, édifié sous terre cet ouvrage secret. On y traite le plutonium militaire fourni par trois réacteurs (deux d’entre eux arrêtés à l’automne 1992). Le troisième alimente en chaleur et en énergie électrique le combinat minier et métallurgique de Krasnoïarsk. C’est la seule centrale nucléaire souterraine au monde.

https://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/Nouv_zemble.html

The reactor plant was brought into operation on August 25th, 1958 and by 1964, the plant consisted of three graphite reactors. According to American estimates, the facility at Krasnoyarsk-26 produced more than 40 tons of weapons-grade plutonium, roughly one-third of the plutonium contained within the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger2/

Krasnoyarsk-26 is a secret city, with a secret population. It’s not on any map and the 100,000 people who live there don’t exist in any census and don’t have any contact with the outside world. Until the last few years, even the name of the city was a secret.

In 1998, 60 Minutes II Producer George Crile visited Krasnoyarsk-26 and discovered that what goes on in this Russian city may be the biggest threat to U.S. national security. Nestled in the frozen wilds of Siberia, Krasnoyarsk-26 produces plutonium, the key ingredient in most nuclear weapons. Over the past 40 years, its factories have produced 40 tons of the deadly element, enough for more than 10,000 nuclear bombs. The residents of Krasnoyarsk-26 were recruited from all over the Soviet Union. They were given the best food, the best clothes, the best housing that the Soviet Union had to offer. By Soviet standards, they lived the good life. They were even nicknamed the « chocolate eaters » by their jealous countrymen.

But to get these advantages, they had to agree not to leave or have any visitors from the outside world. They were constantly under surveillance by the KGB. Even today, eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city is still isolated.

The most isolated part of the city is the mountain where the plutonium was produced. Last year, Crile became the first Westerner to take a camera crew into that mountain.

Even today, a decade after the end of the Cold War, one of the reactors is still making plutonium. The engineers will not turn it off and cannot turn it off. If they did turn it off, the 100,000 people who live in Krasnoyarsk-26 would freeze to death. That reactor provides the energy that heats this frozen city.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-secret-city/