Rosatom mourns workers in jet crash

21 June 2011

Russian state nuclear company Rosatom reported that five senior staff from three of its subsidiary enterprises were among the 44 people who died in a plane crash in Russia's north-western republic of Karelia on 20 June. The RusAir Tu-134 passenger jet on which they were travelling was bound for Petrozavodsk airport from Moscow, but crashed onto a road about one kilometre from its destination. The airport was reportedly shrouded in fog at the time of the accident. Just eight of the 52 people on board survived the crash. Rosatom said that among those killed were three employees of Podolsk-based nuclear power reactor design and nuclear engineering organisation OKB Gidropress: Sergey Ryzhov, director and general designer; Banyuk Gennady Fedorovich, deputy director and chief designer; and Nikolai Trunov, head of department and chief designer. Andrei Petrovich Trofimov, chief technologist of Nizhny Novgorod-based machinery engineering bureau OKBM Afrikantov, and Valery Lyalin Filippovich, head of the technology department of AtomEnergoMash - the engineering division of Rosatom - also died. Rosatom said that it and its subsidiaries had "suffered a great loss."