#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. State Duma deputy Georgy Arapov held a number of meetings with the Nornickel leaders and visited the Nadezhda metallurgical plant where a unique ecological production facility is being built. The deputy also assessed progress of the Clean Norilsk project (Nornickel company’s environmental initiative).
There is forces and equipment’s increase at the Sulfur Program’s construction today: the number of specialists and workers involved at the Nadezhda metallurgical plant’s construction has increased to 3,200 people, the special equipment’s number – up to 700 units. The Polar division has started the most important phase of work.
The main ecological project’s stages are in a high readiness degree: the limestone reception and crushing building, the lime milk preparation workshop, the areas for sulfuric acid’s storing, neutralizing and production.
The future Sulfur Program’s workshops are being actively filled with new technologies. Each unit is significant in the overall ecological chain through which the gas will be cleaned. Construction on Nadezhda metallurgical plant is being carried out on an area comparable to seven football fields. According to the high-ranking guest, he had never seen such a large-scale environmental problem’s solution.
The financial, time, personnel and technological resources invested in this project by the company can hardly be overestimated.
Georgy Arapov said:
The country pays great attention to the environment, but the Sulfur Project is difficult to compare with anything else: it is innovative in its content and impressive in its scale. This is a good example for other domestic enterprises in their responsible attitude to the environment. I hope they will start to learn from this experience. The Sulfur Project is a concern not only for nature, but, first of all, for the health of the people who live here.
The Sulfur Program’s advantage is that more than 70 percent of its technical equipment is based on domestic developments. The deputy noted that the state was ready to help businesses in case of problems:
Russian companies may experience failures in the some technological chains’ replacement today. In particular, this applies to electronics. We also had a lot of conversations with Nornickel on the speeding up the construction permit procedure. We are all waiting for the project’s commissioning and completion. I am sure that the technologies that will be tested here today can be transferred to other enterprises operating in the Arctic zone and other parts of our country.
The deputy also visited the Clean Norilsk program’s sites. The scale of these changes is also impressive. In just a year more than a million square meters of land were cleared of garbage in the Norilsk industrial region which is comparable to the territory of 160 football fields. 123 dilapidated buildings were dismantled. 330,000 tons of construction waste and 40,000 tons of scrap metal were collected and removed.
The guest was told that the employees of the enterprise, specially created in the Polar division, are carrying out sanitary treatment of the territories freed from garbage on their own.
According to Georgy Arapov, this is an indicator of concern for the environment and the future of these places. The company’s contribution to solving the problem that has developed in the Arctic zone (cleaning up the territory from garbage accumulated over decades) is huge.
The deputy concluded:
My task is to put together the solutions’ package that we will form here together with the company’s specialists, discuss this with our faction, and discuss with the State Duma how companies that implement innovative environmental projects in the Russian Federation’s Arctic zone can be supported. It is important to support such initiatives at the federal and legislative levels. At the same time, companies often need to be given freedom, a platform to work. Nornickel demonstrates this example to us. Just look at the scale of work here!
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Text:Elena Popova, Photo: Marina Peshkova
