Silicon danger

Omsk vs Deripaska

15,000 residents of Omsk signed a petition demanding to freeze the construction of a silicon plant in the city, 6,500 united at protest sites on social networks, and the streets of the city were decorated with graffiti "Silicon will kill us." The Center for Combating Extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs became interested in environmentalists, and the authorities are convincing residents that there is nothing dangerous in silicon. The arguments of the parties studied The New Times
The regional authorities decided to build silicon production plants in Omsk after they failed to do so in Khakassia. In the spring of 2010, representatives of Oleg Deripaska's Russian Silicon company convinced Khakass residents for a long time that there was no need to be afraid of building silicon plants - it was an environmentally friendly production, new jobs, taxes, and new technologies with innovations. Residents did not believe it, and on June 16, 2010, 6 thousand people took to the streets of Abakan, after which the authorities of the republic refused to allocate land for construction. Then the authorities of the Omsk region agreed to accept the project on their territory: they were not convinced by either the example of Abakan or the experience of Sosnovy Bor, a town in the Leningrad region, where Russian Silicon wanted to build a plant in 2007 (due to protests from local residents, the project was also curtailed) . Perhaps the administration will be convinced by the protests of the townspeople: in Omsk, more than 15,000 people have already signed a petition calling to stop the design and construction of silicon plants in the city.
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Silicon plants produce polycrystalline silicon, a raw material for the semiconductor industry. It is of "solar" quality (used for the production of solar panels) and more pure - "electronic" quality, used in modern microelectronics, industrial and power electronics. Demand for the products is quite high, but so far only two such plants are operating in Russia. 70% of world production is based on Siemens technology * * The principle was developed by German engineers back in 1938 under the leadership of Luftwaffe Commander Goering; polysilicon was used to make radars, one of the intermediate chemical compounds in which is trichlorosilane (SiHCl3).
Ecologists say that this technology is dangerous: all chlorine derivatives of silicon cause local corrosion, leading to the rapid destruction of equipment. Therefore, there is always the possibility of an emergency. And in the event of an accident, trichlorosilane, obtained in large quantities, can form toxic clouds, is corrosive to the eyes, skin and respiratory tract. Inhalation of its vapors causes pulmonary edema and death.
Therefore, nowhere in the world are plants for the production of polycrystalline silicon located closer than 100 km from large cities. It is customary to build such factories at a distance from small provincial towns. Thus, the headquarters of one of the world's largest corporations in this area, MEMC Inc. is located in St. Peters (52 thousand people), Missouri, USA, and the silicon plant itself is 4 km from the town of Sherman (38.5 thousand people), Texas, 110 km from the nearest large city of Dallas (1.2 million people) * * Large plant MEMC Inc. there are also in Italy, 4 km from the town of Merano (35 thousand people) and 200 km from Milan (1.3 million people). The silicon plant of the Norwegian REC Group is located 5 km from the town of Moses Lake (20.5 thousand people) in the state of Washington, 210 km from the nearest large city of Seattle (615 thousand people).
In Omsk (1.154 million people), the local authorities decided to place two whole factories.
civil protest
The first to announce the construction of a silicon plant in Omsk was the Titan group of companies, owned by Mikhail Sutyaginsky, State Duma deputy from United Russia. According to Vasily Zubakov, Director General of CJSC NPO Silarus (a subsidiary of Titan, chief designer), the plant should produce about 10,000 tons of silicon per year.

Environmentalists began to protest and explain the danger of such construction. But the townspeople did not pay attention to the first performances. But when in July 2011 it became known that two silicon plants could be built in the city at once (the deputy of the Legislative Assembly from United Russia Oleg Shishov became the initiator of another project), the townspeople, as they say, woke up. In a couple of weeks, to the group on the VKontakte network “NO to silicon plants in Omsk!” 2,000 users have joined, a similar platform in Odnoklassniki already unites more than 4,500 Omsk residents. New "enemies" began to distribute leaflets around the city, stick stickers on the windows of their cars, fences and walls of houses were decorated with graffiti "Silicon will kill us."
“We need to build 48 silicon factories on the territory of the Kremlin!” suggests environmental activist Natalya. “It would be better if the metro was completed in Omsk, otherwise they have been stealing money for 10 years!” - Pensioner Grigory Vasilevsky is indignant. “If the construction does not stop, we will move with my family to Ufa,” says teacher Irina Golovina. - There is nothing to breathe in the city. Stop shitting in Siberia with your factories! Let Putin build them at his dacha, or let them create industrial zones outside the settlements.”
“The Cossack organization decided to oppose the construction of silicon plants because there are so many chemical industries within the city that do not comply with environmental safety, emissions are constant,” Aleksey Nikolaev, ataman of the Second Military Department of the Siberian Cossack Host, told The New Times. “Now we are raising the issue of holding a referendum to ask citizens if they want to have such an enterprise in the city.”
Many politicians also support the idea of ​​a referendum: “The authorities themselves are interested in holding a referendum in order to convince people that these conversations should not take place, to convince them that this will be the purest production, to bring the opinion of scientists, then there will be no questions,” says a member of the Legislative Assembly, a communist Leonid Mikhailenko. Regional branches of the LDPR and Yabloko also joined the fight against the silicon plant.
“Until the technical parameters of the project are known, it is impossible to assess the full scale of the risks,” says Sergey Kostarev, chairman of the board of the human rights organization Ecological Committee. — But Omsk is in any case very unfavorable, the level of pollution is very high. We fall into the category of the most polluted cities. If the plant is built, then in the event of an accident, which is very likely in the conditions of total corruption in Russia, a catastrophe will occur.”
The protests came as a surprise to the regional authorities, who managed to avoid popular indignation even during the monetization of benefits. Minister of Health of the region Yuri Yerofeev, First Deputy Chairman of the Government Andrey Besshtanko and Minister of Industry, Transport and Communications Alexander Gorbunov rushed to the defense of silicon plants: on television and on the radio they explained that the plants were not dangerous for Omsk residents, the arguments of opponents were far-fetched, and their actions interfered with development of the region's economy. The head of the region, Leonid Polezhaev, who has been in charge of the region for 20 years and managed to hold on even during Medvedev's cleansing of the governor's corps, spoke the brightest of all. “The plant for the production of polypropylene, which we are introducing in November, is much more dangerous from an environmental point of view than the silicon plant, which we are still going to build,” he said on television and urged not to listen to “adventurers who have only one goal: to work on some kind of wave, to excite people in order to arrange their political future. Obviously, it is this assessment of what is happening that will be put forward by the local authorities in response to all the arguments. If this does not convince them, the Omsk Center for Combating Extremism will join in, which is already closely monitoring all the actions of activists.

Trichlorosilane technology From metallurgical silicon, trichlorosilane (SiHCl3) is obtained by chlorination, which is purified from impurities and sent to a hydrogen reduction reactor, where polycrystalline silicon is deposited on base rods heated to 900 °C. By-products after cleaning and regeneration are returned to the process.