The history of the Nadezhda metallurgical plant began a decade earlier than its official birth. In 1968, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Alexei Kosygin flew to Norilsk. His visit was the impetus for the construction of the second nickel plant, which did not yet have its own name.
At first, the new plant was supposed to be built on the mainland. So, Lesosibirsk was considered as a base for it, where the semi-finished product – matte – had to be delivered along the Yenisey. History repeated itself: only that time, the implementation of the full cycle – from ore to metal – in Norilsk was defended, like Avraamy Zavenyagin did it with the first nickel plant, by Alexey Kosygin. So the metallurgical giant was built in the Arctic.
The construction site for the current Nadezhda metallurgical plant was not approved immediately: there were 14 different options for the plant’s location. For example, the option of separating hydro- and pyrometallurgy was considered. At the same time, it was proposed to build one redistribution near Talnah, and the second – under the Dvugorbaya mountain. As a result, the second nickel plant was built on a solid rock foundation, on the site of the former Nadezhda airfield. A small aircraft was put onto the postament near the plant as a witness of its history.
The general contractor for the construction was the USSR Ministry of Energy and Electrification. Therefore, the first builders of Nadezhda were the workers of Hantaigesstroy, who came from Snezhnogorsk, where they built the Hantayskaya hydro-electrical station. On March 26, the first explosion was made in the quarry, from where the footing for the site was taken.
The date of the plant’s commencement is October 13, 1979, when its first stage – hydrometallurgical – was launched. In 1981, with the launch of the pyrometallurgical line, the Nadezhda metallurgical plant was put into operation.
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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive
