Transcript of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: A tragedy has hit Russia. It has taken lives, and a strategically important technical centre is at risk. Let us take stock of the situation, collect and analyse information, and make urgent decisions.

Three sites are in conference-the National Emergency Management Centre in Moscow, where we are now; Abakan, where a Government team led by Mr Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief, has come; and the dam location and local emergency headquarters.

Let us begin with the chief engineer. He must be on line. Mr Mitrofanov?

Andrei Mitrofanov: Good afternoon, Mr Putin.

Vladimir Putin: Please say in a few words what has happened.

Andrei Mitrofanov: Water began to leak into the turbine room of the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant at 8:13 in the morning, local time, because of an accident with Unit Two. All nine units active at the time had to be shut down.

Power dropped from 4,400 megawatts to zero. The plant experienced a total power failure including the electricity necessary to keep itself operating.

The turbine room flooded with workers inside.

Trouble-shooters closed the valves of all the working units by hand to stop water from flowing into the turbine room by 9:20.

The upper Yenisei River flow slowed with the generators offline, so we took measures to resume the flow through the available water networks. An emergency diesel generator re-energised the plant. Upstream water control resumed, and we started opening the central dam gates at 11:50.

The eleven spillway gates were opened by 12:07, and water flow balance was restored to pre-accident levels. All eleven gates are open now, with summary discharge through the system at a volume of 2,620 cubic metres a second.

Preliminary inspections indicate damage to all ten units because the entire turbine room was flooded. The damage will be fully assessed soon.

We are also assessing the amount of a small turbine oil spill in the afterbay.

About 300 personnel were working at the plant during the accident. As far as we know, 10 are dead and 11 injured. Another 72 are missing. The Ministry of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief and other agencies have sent rescuers and equipment. Two workers have been rescued from the flooded rooms.

Rubble is being cleared from the turbine room, which is ruined in the vicinity of Unit Two. We are restoring electric supply to the area under repair, communications, lighting, etc.

That is all I wanted to say.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you. Where is the manager?

Nikolai Nevolko: This is plant manager Nikolai Nevolko. Good afternoon.

Vladimir Putin: Hello. What, in your opinion, caused the disaster?

Nikolai Nevolko: We can only speculate; we cannot be sure. I hope everything will be clear after we dry the turbine room and get to the flow tube. Meanwhile, we have reason to blame a hydro mechanical equipment failure.

Vladimir Putin: How long do you think it will take to pump water out of the turbine room and dry it?

Nikolai Nevolko: Three to eight days depending on the reliability of the afterbay valves.

Vladimir Putin: All right, thank you. Daniyar Safiullin, head of the Siberian Regional Centre of the Ministry of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief, has the floor. What dangers do you expect? How do you assess casualties? Is the local population or environment threatened? What have you done to mitigate the danger, if any?

Daniyar Safiullin: This is Major General Safiullin, head of the Siberian Regional Centre.

First, repair works have begun, as the chief engineer mentioned, and public information is being released to prevent panic. The situation has been normalised in this respect.

Second, the chief engineer is correct in saying there is no threat of the plant collapsing. Third, there is no danger of flooding downstream settlements. Fourth, search and rescue operations have been organised in the four damaged areas, two of which, in the lower floors of the turbine room, require divers.

We have 222 rescue workers and medical specialists on site. The Interior Ministry has arranged for plant security. We have 62 officers guarding the plant, and another 140 spread around in the nearest settlements.

As for pollution, there was a machine oil release. Oil booms are being installed at the Mainskaya Hydroelectric Plant downstream. We are monitoring the situation farther downstream. No oil slicks have been detected anywhere at this point. We are reinforcing the deployed booms to prevent oil from penetrating the Mainskaya.

This is all I wanted to say.

Vladimir Putin: What makes you so sure flooding is ruled out?

Daniyar Safiullin: Our joint emergency team has assessed the situation. The dam shows no signs of physical damage and water discharge and flow levels, which, as the chief engineer mentioned, have received top priority to prevent a flood, and our calculations confirm this.

Mr Putin, I have inspected the river from a helicopter and have not seen any flooded areas.

Vladimir Putin: The plant is offline, so emergency equipment is necessary to provide water discharge. What equipment is available, and how is it delivered to the disaster area?

Daniyar Safiullin: Mr Putin, water continues to flow through the spillway. The spillway gates are open, and the discharge is now at its normal volume of 2,620 cubic metres a second. We have ordered pumps from the Federal Service for Defence Contracts to work in and under the turbine room. That's it.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Is the regional Governor there?

Viktor Zimin: Good afternoon, Mr Putin.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Zimin, from what we know so far, eleven or more died in the disaster, and many are missing. Please arrange urgent aid to the injured and to their families, and to the victims' families.

Viktor Zimin: We have done this. There are 25 rescue teams. They keep the public informed, and are checking the addresses of the 72 missing persons. A special police force and special rapid response detachments are working on the spot. Psychologists and other experts have come from the Medical Disaster Centre. We have established a psychological counselling hotline in Cheremushki township.

I have confirmed everything that has been reported. Electric power supplies in the Republic of Khakassia are normal. Power restrictions have been lifted at the larger industrial concerns like the Khakass and Sayanogorsk aluminium plants, and all the others are operating normally.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Zimin, I have asked you to provide aid to the injured and the bereaved. Police are all right-law and order must be maintained-but people need help.

Viktor Zimin: We are helping, Mr Putin.

Vladimir Putin: Take stock of all collected information, and make a list of all who need help-the Governor must know all the dead and injured, and their families.

Viktor Zimin: I do have such lists, and we are working with them.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thank you.

Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin is here in the studio with us. Mr Sechin, major companies and municipal projects are without electricity due to the accident. What help can they expect?

Igor Sechin: Mr Putin, per your instructions directives have been issued to resume power to the major manufacturers whose supply was restricted or suspended entirely-in particular, the Kuznetsk Ferroalloy Plant, and the Novokuznetsk, Krasnoyarsk, Sayan and Khakass aluminium plants, which had no electricity at all.

Vladimir Putin: How many major companies had no electricity?

Igor Sechin: About seven.

Vladimir Putin: What do you mean by "about seven"? Five or six?

Igor Sechin: The Ferroalloy Plant and the Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk, Sayan and Khakass aluminium plants. This makes five.

Vladimir Putin: I see.

Igor Sechin: The grid transmission system operator for Siberia ordered the Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk hydroelectric plants to power up to full capacity. Another 18 plants in the Altai, Krasnoyarsk and Baikal territories, the Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Kemerovo regions, and the Buryat and Khakass republics also were ordered to increase output.

All the electric power restrictions in the united Siberian power grid were lifted by 4 pm today. Normal power is now available for all consumers.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Sechin, these measures require reliability. The current temporary arrangement will not hold for long. Industry, municipal services and other consumers need an unbroken power supply.

It is the middle of August now. The Siberian winter starts early, so this temporary arrangement should be reliable and durable-at any rate, to last until the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant is repaired.

Please forward the specific proposals, and I will formulate more generalised directions later.

Igor Sechin: I will, Mr Putin.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Zubakin, acting Board Chairman of RusHydro, has the floor. How do you intend to organise the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant restoration?

Vasily Zubakin: We are currently clearing the rubble and pumping out the water to enable repair work. Leading experts from Power Machines Company, Electrosila equipment manufacturers, and engineers from the Lengidroproekt R&D Institute will arrive at the dam by air. Most of the RusHydro Co managers are at the dam now. All will work together in assessing the state of the plant. Unit Six was under repair during the accident, and we still hope to find it in working condition. As for the rest, three units are completely destroyed and the rest require serious evaluation.

If we see there is no chance to shut the afterbay spillway gates tightly enough, we will immediately start building a cofferdam that will duplicate the one used during plant construction.

We have obtained the design specifications of 40 years ago. Luckily, there are major construction teams here who are building a new spillway at the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam.

We want to expedite the spillway construction and have one of its two races ready by the next spring flood season. There is no chance to restore the plant by spring, so there will be no hydroelectric generators using water. Therefore, apart from the available emergency spillway, we need several others to cope with spring water levels, which will demand a capacity of 6, 8, 10 or even 12 cubic metres a second.

All talks of the Boguchanskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant being redundant must stop. We have contacted Mr Oleg Deripaska, our partner, and plan to expedite its construction and operational start-up to fill in the gap in the Siberian electric power industry.

What can impede restoration? First, the capacity to manufacture power generating equipment. Power Machines Company will barely be able to manufacture more than two of these giant generating units. We will discuss this with directors and analysts tomorrow. Possibly, we could withdraw some of our own orders, for example, the reconstruction of a plant in the Volga-Kama cascade, in order to free up Power Machines' resources for these more urgent needs.

Further, the present crane assembly allows for no more than two machines being assembled or reconstructed at a time. The entire job may take four years or even longer at a rate of two machines manufactured a year, plus installation time.

The new Boguchanskaya plant, with an expedited construction schedule, might achieve its full capacity of 3000 megawatts in three years and could compensate for the Sayano-Shushenskaya.

We have established a strong team of engineers from research and design institutes. They are processing all the data from the automatic process control system recordings, made second by second. The team started working tonight, and I expect initial reports as soon as tomorrow morning or early afternoon tomorrow.

Vladimir Putin: Good. You are right, Mr Zubakin, the job should start by assessing the damage. Again, we will not produce an effective restoration plan unless we first organise alternative power sources from other power plants, clear the rubble and set up an emergency team, in which Lengidroproekt and other experts take part.

As for the Boguchanskaya and so on, we will review this a bit later, though everything you said about the Boguchanskaya plant is appropriate. We will talk about it in Moscow.

Vasily Zubakin: Can I add a few words, Mr Putin?

Vladimir Putin: Do please.

Vasily Zubakin: Market rates have skyrocketed in Siberia today.

Vladimir Putin: I intended to pose this very question to Maxim Yegorov, deputy head of the Federal Tariff Service. Let us listen to what he says about snowballing electricity tariffs.

Daniyar Safiullin: This is Safiullin. Mr Putin, Mr Yegorov is not with us. He is in Abakan.

Vladimir Putin: Let us switch to the Abakan studio. Mr Shoigu, is Mr Yegorov with you?

Sergei Shoigu: We have dispatched him to Sayanogorsk urgently. He is halfway from Abakan now.

Vladimir Putin: All right. I will ask him about it later, anyway. I am aware of skyrocketing energy rates in the region.

Mr Igor Sechin and some Tariff Service experts are here. Please, Mr Sechin, analyse the situation from a legal standpoint, and draft your proposals on price and tariff calculations in the region and within the context of the current emergency.

We will not be impulsive about this-but we should not look the other way during an emergency, either. Current legislation provides us sufficient tools to bring the situation into order. Your initiatives are welcome.

Mr Shoigu, I expect you in Moscow as soon as you get a firsthand view of the emergency, with a report prioritising what you deem necessary at the plant.

I am counting on the Investigation Committee, which should report its findings on the causes of the disaster.

A commission will be established, led by Deputy Prime Minister by Mr Sechin, to restore the power plant as soon as possible, prevent a regional crisis at winter's threshold, and spare consumers as much as possible. Please provide the commission's tentative membership and draw up a restoration schedule.

I wish you every success. Thank you. Goodbye.