Norilsk


Norilsk is an industrial city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located above the Arctic Circle, east of the Yenisei River and south of the western Taymyr Peninsula. It has a permanent population of 175,000. With temporary inhabitants included, its population reaches 220,000.
It is the world's northernmost city with more than 100,000 inhabitants and the second-largest city inside the Arctic Circle. Norilsk and Yakutsk are the only large cities in the continuous permafrost zone.
The nickel deposits of Norilsk-Talnakh are the largest-known nickel-copper-palladium deposits in the world. The smelting of the nickel ore is directly responsible for severe pollution, which generally comes in the form of acid rain and smog. By some estimates, one percent of global sulfur dioxide emission comes from Norilsk's nickel mines.

History

Norilsk was founded at the end of the 1920s, but the official date of founding is traditionally 1935, when Norilsk was expanded as a settlement for the Norilsk mining-metallurgic complex and became the center of the Norillag system of Gulag labor camps. It was granted urban-type settlement status in 1939 and town status in 1953.
Norilsk is located between the West Siberian Plain and Central Siberian Plateau at the foot of the Putoran Mountains, on some of the largest nickel deposits on Earth. Consequently, mining and smelting ore are the major industries. Norilsk is the center of a region where nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium and coal are mined. Mineral deposits in the Siberian Craton had been known for two centuries before Norilsk was founded, but mining began only in 1939, when the buried portions of the Norilsk-Talnakh intrusions were found beneath mountainous terrain.
Talnakh is the major mine/enrichment site now from where an enriched ore emulsion is pumped to Norilsk metallurgy plants.
To support the new city, the Norilsk railway to the port of Dudinka on the Yenisei River was established, first as a narrow-gauge line, later as Russian standard gauge line. From Dudinka, enriched nickel and copper are transported to Murmansk by sea and, then, to the Monchegorsk enrichment and smelting plant on the Kola Peninsula, while more precious content goes up the river to Krasnoyarsk. This transportation takes place only during the summer. The port of Dudinka is closed and dismantled during spring's ice barrier floods of up to in late May.
In the early 1950s, the Salekhard–Igarka Railway was under construction from the European coal city Vorkuta via the Salekhard/Ob River, and Norilsk got a spacious railway station built in the expectation of train service to Moscow, but construction stopped after Joseph Stalin died.
According to the archives of Norillag, 16,806 prisoners died in Norilsk under the conditions of forced labor, starvation and intense cold during the existence of the camp. Fatalities were especially high during World War II from 1942–44 when food supplies were particularly scarce. Prisoners organized the non-violent Norilsk uprising in 1953. An unknown, yet significant number of prisoners continued to serve and die in the mines until around 1979.
A number of Finnish companies assisted in the construction and automation of Norilsk's No. 2 copper and nickel smelters, which led to bringing substantial numbers of Finnish metallurgical and automation experts and their families to Norilsk starting in 1978, creating a Finnish expat community of some hundreds of people for a couple of years. Norilsk before and after that has remained a closed city.
Norilsk-Talnakh continues to be a dangerous mine to work in. According to the mining company, there were 2.4 accidents per thousand workers in 2005. In 2017, Norilsk Nickel claimed that it had reduced its overall lost time injury frequency rate by almost 60% since 2013.
In June 2020, 20,000 tons of diesel fuel spilled from the tank of an NTEK power plant.

Administrative and municipal status

Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is, together with the urban-type settlement of Snezhnogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, incorporated as the krai city of Norilsk—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the krai city of Norilsk is incorporated as Norilsk Urban Okrug.

Demographics

Population

The population of Norilsk is. After the fall of the USSR the population dropped by 40,000, but this was offset by the subsequent merger of the towns of Kayerkan and Talnakh into Norilsk, maintaining a permanent population of 175,000. Including temporary residents, the population reaches 220,000 people.
Life expectancy for local residents is about ten years less than average Russian life expectancy.

Religion

Christianity is the main religion in Norilsk. There is a Russian Orthodox cathedral, several Russian Orthodox churches and a Ukrainian Orthodox church. There is a mosque in Norilsk. Built in 1998 and belonging to the local Tatar community, it is considered to be the northernmost Muslim prayer house in the world.

Geography and natural environment

Norilsk is one of the world's most northerly settlements and is the largest city built on permafrost inside the Arctic Circle.

Climate

Despite being located inside the Arctic Circle, Norilsk has a subarctic climate with very long, severely cold winters and very short, mild summers. It is covered with snow for about 250–270 days a year, with snow storms for about 110–130 days. The midnight sun is above the horizon from 21 May to 24 July, and the period when the sun does not rise, polar night, is from approximately 30 November to 13 January. Temperatures can sometimes rise above in July. Much of the surrounding areas are naturally treeless tundra. Only a few trees exist in Norilsk.
Note that in the table above, rainy days includes days with snow as well.

Norilsk-Talnakh nickel deposits

The nickel deposits of Norilsk-Talnakh are the largest-known nickel-copper-palladium deposits in the world. The deposit was formed 250 million years ago during the eruption of the Siberian Traps igneous province. The STIP erupted over one million cubic kilometers of lava, a large portion of it through a series of flat-lying lava conduits below Norilsk and the Talnakh Mountains.
The current resource known for these mineralized intrusion exceeds 1.8 billion tons.

Pollution

Nickel ore is smelted at the company's processing site at Norilsk. This smelting is directly responsible for severe pollution, which generally comes in the form of acid rain and smog. By some estimates, one percent of global sulfur dioxide emission comes from Norilsk's nickel mines. Heavy metal pollution near Norilsk is so severe that it has now become economically feasible to mine surface soil, as the soil has acquired such high concentrations of platinum and palladium.
The Blacksmith Institute once included Norilsk in its list of the ten most polluted places on Earth. The list cites air pollution by particulates, including radioisotopes strontium-90, and caesium-137 and the metals nickel, copper, cobalt, lead and selenium; and by gases. The Institute estimates four million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc are released into the air every year.
Russia's Federal State Statistics Service lists Norilsk as the most polluted city in Russia. In 2017, Norilsk produced 1.798 million tons of carbon pollutants—nearly six times more than the 304.6 thousand tons that was generated by Russia's second-most polluted city, Cherepovets. Norilsk, the report states, decontaminates almost half of its emissions.
According to an April 2007 BBC News report, Norilsk Nickel accepted personal responsibility for what had happened to the forests, and insisted that the company was implementing measures to reduce pollution. In 2016, company chairman Vladimir Potanin admitted that its biggest problem was environmental.
In 2017, Norilsk Nickel announced that it had invested $14 billion in a major development program aimed at reducing sulfur dioxide emissions in Norilsk by 75% by 2023, compared to 2015 as a base year. One of the bigger steps taken to combat pollution was the closure of Nornickel's old smelter in Norilsk, the main source of SO2 emissions within the city boundaries since 1942.
Norilsk Nickel has stated that the total emissions of its Russian operations was 6% lower in 2016 than in 2015, primarily due to the shutdown of the smelter. The company's environmental program also includes an upgrade of the Talnakh Concentrator, to increase sulfur disposal to tailings, and the construction of recycling units to extract sulfur dioxide from waste gases at Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant and Copper Plant.
In September 2016, images surfaced on social media of the nearby Daldykan River, which had turned red. Russia's Environment Ministry issued a statement claiming that preliminary evidence pointed towards Nornickel-owned wastewater pipes from a nearby smelting plant as the source of the contamination. The company referred to intense rainfall and insisted that the incident of sedimentary coloring was of no danger to people or wildlife. The smelting plant, the company said then, was in the process of being modernized.

May 2020 diesel spill

On 29 May 2020 a fuel reservoir, owned by Nornickel subsidiary, NTEK, collapsed, flooding the nearby Ambarnaya River with 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel. Vladimir Putin, the Russian President declared a state of emergency. The fuel was a reserve used as a backup for the main gas supply to a power plant. The storage tank was built on permafrost which, according to a statement by the company, could possibly have melted and become unstable due to climate change. An area of 350 square kilometres has been contaminated and it will be difficult to clean this because there are no roads and the river is too shallow for boats and barges. Oleg Mitvol estimates that the clean-up will cost about 100 billion roubles and take 5–10 years.

Economy

, a mining company, is the principal employer in the Norilsk area.
The city is served by Alykel Airport and Valek Airport. There is a freight-only railway, the Norilsk railway between Norilsk and the port of Dudinka. There is a road network around Norilsk, but no road or railway to the rest of Russia. In essence, Norilsk and Dudinka function like an island. Freight transport is by boat on the Arctic Ocean or on the Yenisei River.
Since 2017, internet connection speeds have improved due to the installation of a 957 km communications cable laid along the Yenisei River toward Krasnoyarsk.

Culture

Norilsk has a history museum and an art gallery, the Norilsk Polar Drama Theater, a cultural center, a sports and entertainment complex, and many monuments and historical buildings.

Notable people

General sources