Gallery. Valley. RDC ScanEx

Gallery

Title
Norilsk Industrial Area

Acquisition date
01.09.2005

Sensor
EROS-A

887 x 885
JPEG (638 KB)

Norilsk Industrial Area

This black-and-white EROS-A image with 2 m resolution depicts part of one of the world’s northernmost metallurgical sites – Norilsk Industrial Area with its center in the town of Norilsk. The town is above the Polar Circle, in Taimyr Region of Krasnoyarsk Territory at the bottom of the Norilsk Mountains. Norilskya River flows near the mountains, running into Pyasino Lake. The town was built on the talik - frozen swamp of 300 meters deep, affirming the origin of the town and river name coming from the Evenki “narus” or “nyoril”, which means “swamps”.

There is a number of evidence of using the Norilsk fields over a period of several centuries. Native copper balls were discovered near Pyasino Lake and a casting yard was found during the excavation activities of the town of Mangazei – an artisan center of the 16-18 centuries above the Polar Circle on the Taz River.

The modern stage of Norilsk fields exploration starts with the Urvantsev expeditions, when in 1921 he built the first house in Norilsk called a “zero end” later on. In 1935, the GULAG prisoners started to build the Norilsk metallurgical plant. A long smoke plume coming from its stacks (see image) covers the old town, where there no dwelling houses at all nowadays. Most part of mines and pits are located in the neighboring mountains of Schmidt and Rudnaya. The first one stands out on the image in form of a high black mountain with high coal banks alternating with dead rock. The second contains thick ore body, therefore the Norilsk ore mining and processing mill was built at the northern bottom on the rocky ground. The circular embankments around the Schmidt mountain, displayed on the image, are hillocks made of dead rock. Rudnaya mountain has different type of embankment – oblong tailing dumps where waste rock with rejected mineral products. In 1951 the construction of the new town of Norilsk started on the eastern bank of the Dolgoye lake with typical for that times rectangular town planning. Operation of another metallurgical plant “Medny zavod” can be seen on the image to the north of the new town. “Anhydrite” mine is running to support internal needs of this plant.

The production chain of the transpolar “Norilsk nickel” plant includes the adjacent natural sites. The entire system consists of three principal links: at the first stage copper-nickel ore is being processed, at the second – the ore mining and processing mills are producing copper and nickel concentrate, and only at the third stage the metallurgical plants are involved to make the end-products. The concentrate is being transported to the plant using “hydraulic transport” systems of 30 km long. The so-called “tailings” are flown to tundra and dropped into lakes, which are used as natural sumps in this process layout. Besides, the lakes are used for other purposes: the Dolgoye lake serves as a cooling pond, therefore it does not freeze in winter due to hot water dumps from the plants.

To date, around 85% of Russian nickel and cobalt, about 70% of copper and over 95% of platinum is produced. The transpolar “Norilsk nickel” plant subsidiary provides 1/5 of the world nickel production and about 40% of the precious and non-ferrous metals.

Therefore, due to irrational anthropogenic load on the environment at the world’s largest industrial site, Norilsk is truly regarded as one of the most polluted towns on the planet, where CO2 emissions only constitute 2 million tons per year. Due to the ecological modernization being carried out in the transpolar Norilsk nickel plant the emissions volume in 2005 was reduced by 3%. The ecological program also includes the construction of facilities for effective recycling of sulfur generated by “rich” hydrocarbon gases.

Title:	Norilsk Industrial Area
Acquisition date:	01.09.2006
Sensor:	EROS-A

©2005-2010 R&D Center ScanEx. All Rights Reserved.mailto: webmaster@scanex.ru

©2005-2010 R&D Center ScanEx. All Rights Reserved.
mailto: webmaster@scanex.ru