Plant # 820

V.P. Shopen

The Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical Complex (AECC) yielded its first product — enriched uranium-235 — on October 21, 1957. This day is considered the birthday of AECC.
Till the mid-1980s, the plant belonged to the system of military defence of the USSR, it took part in the production of “military” enriched uranium used in atomic bombs, forged the atomic shield of our Motherland. However, in the second half of the 1980s, the Complex was given orders to shift to production of peaceful uranium-235 hexafluoride of a low degree of enrichment, raw material from which other plants make nuclear fuel for power stations.
In 2007 AECC celebrated its 50th anniversary not only to remind that 50 years ago its first facilities started to work, but also to recollect and to express deep gratitude to the scientists, engineers, technicians, and workers whose fate was to come here first from other places of Russia and to take part in the construction of the giant nuclear facility in remote Siberia, in the midst of pristine taiga.
This was a great victory. Half a century ago, they joined their efforts to cope with the enormous task of creating a very big high-tech plant in a most challenging environment, and succeeded in doing this in less than four years after the governmental decision of 1954...

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