A suspected hazardous materials leak forced employees to shelter in place at Intel's Kiryat Gat manufacturing plant on Monday morning, just six days after a nitrogen tank explosion at the same facility killed two workers and left a third in serious condition. Israel Fire and Rescue Services confirmed it received an emergency report through its 102 dispatch center and sent crews, including specialized hazardous materials units, to investigate.
What Happened on Monday
According to fire and rescue officials, Intel employees detected the leak themselves, prompting an immediate internal shelter-in-place order while emergency teams were summoned. Fire and rescue crews from the Ashkelon station arrived at the scene alongside specialized units trained to handle chemical hazards. Officials said teams were working to trace the source of the substance, stabilize conditions on site, and collect samples for analysis. As of the latest statement, the incident remained contained within the plant's perimeter, with no reported danger to residents of the surrounding area and no casualties.
Intel said its internal monitoring systems flagged the leak during preparations to remove gas tanks from the facility. The company identified the substance as nitrogen trifluoride, the same gas involved in last week's fatal explosion, and said it was coordinating closely with emergency services and relevant authorities to manage the situation.
A Dangerous Industrial Gas
Nitrogen trifluoride is widely used in semiconductor manufacturing, where it serves as a cleaning agent for the chambers used to deposit thin films on silicon wafers. It is prized industrially because it breaks down efficiently into reactive fluorine during plasma processes, but that same chemical reactivity makes it hazardous to handle. Exposure can cause severe respiratory damage, and the gas is also a potent greenhouse gas, factors that require strict containment, ventilation, and storage protocols in any facility that uses it at industrial scale.
Fire and rescue officials said last week's explosion was likely caused by a technical failure involving the rupture of a tank neck on a vessel holding eight tons of nitrogen trifluoride. Officials described the failure as rare and said it remains unclear whether it stemmed from material wear or could have been prevented through different maintenance or inspection practices. That explosion killed Ilya Chechulin, 49, and Yakir Kosashvili, 35. A third worker, a man in his twenties, was hospitalized in serious condition in the internal medicine intensive care unit at Soroka Medical Center, where he was reported sedated and on a ventilator.
Scrutiny Over Plant Safety
The near-simultaneous timing of two separate incidents involving the same hazardous gas at the same facility is likely to intensify scrutiny of safety procedures at Kiryat Gat, one of Intel's largest manufacturing sites outside the United States. Semiconductor fabrication plants rely on an extensive inventory of toxic and flammable gases, and regulators typically require rigorous handling standards, redundant detection systems, and regular equipment inspections to prevent exactly this kind of recurrence. Whether Monday's leak is linked to the same equipment, procedures, or gas-removal process involved in last week's fatal explosion has not yet been established, and authorities are expected to examine both incidents as part of a broader review of safety practices at the site.