#ARCTIC.#SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The overlapping headquarters, headed by the chief engineer of Hantaigesstroy, Vladimir Plotnikov, decided to throw boulders into the river in bundles.
The right to dump the first ‘oversized’ boulders was won by the teams of drivers Nikolay Barchukov, Vladimir Shonov and Boris Golvan with Mikhail Ivanov. History has preserved not only their names, but also pictures of the beginning of the storming of the river on October 11, 1967.
Lumps of rock were constantly been thrown into the river day and night. In the first two days, forty dump trucks and twenty-eight KrAZ trucks laid more than seven thousand cubic meters of rock and oversized blocks on the bottom of the Hantayka river.
On the third day, when the banks of the river were noticeably close and there were only a few hours left before their meeting, a downpour suddenly began. Hantayka rebelled again. It went into the tunnel cut in the rock only two weeks later.
The project provided for two tunnels. The narrow one passed only one thousand cubic meters per second – the winter water discharge. A diversion tunnel was designed for seven thousand (per second) of the spring water.
The Hantayka passed its old channel for the last time in the spring of 1969, and the 1970 flood was met by a 65-meter wall of the channel dam and the coastal dam. The last overlap was in the autumn of the same year.
The first power unit of the northernmost hydroelectric power station was launched on the eve of the polar night on November 20, 1970, which was the main gift for the 35th anniversary of the Norilsk combine.
For other materials of our photo project about the history of Norilsk, Taimyr and the Norilsk combine, go to the History spot section.
Other materials of our photo project are in the History spot section.
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Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
