A small explosion near a Russian nuclear power station killed a metal worker and injured two others, officials said on Friday, but there was no radiation leak or threat to people living nearby.

The explosion occurred on Thursday at a metals smelter near the Leningrad Atomic Power Station, whose second reactor has been under repair since July.

A spokesman for the local administration in the town of Sosnovy Bor said one worker had died from burns, while one of the other two men injured was in a serious condition.

The smelter was not connected to the nuclear plant.

"The radiation background at the Leningrad station and surrounding territory is at a level normal for nuclear reactor use, and does not exceed natural background radiation levels," said the Russian Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom).

The ecological services at the power station, which is near St Petersburg, were monitoring the situation but said there was no risk to residents of Russia's second city or nearby Finland.

Regional authorities said the explosion occurred as a result of health and safety regulations being violated.

"There was a spill of molten metal, but not radioactive metal. It got on the workers' clothes, and they caught fire," said Oksana Lagoda, a spokesman for the regional government's natural resources department.

(China Daily December 17, 2005)