World's top copper producer closes smelter in 'Chile's Chernobyl'

Chile's state-owned Codelco copper company, the world's top producer of the metal, closed its Ventanas smelter Wednesday in an area dubbed "Chile's Chernobyl" for the grim environmental impact of heavy industry. 

The smelter's operational boss symbolically gave the order for the shutdown after six decades of operation in an area that also hosts plants and factories of more than a dozen other companies.

Codelco announced that it would close the Ventanas smelter after an incident in June last year when more than 100 people, mostly schoolchildren, suffered sulfur dioxide poisoning near the area.