The Norilsk Nickel company was reportedly discharging toxic waste into the tundra and from there into the polar rivers and Lake Pyasino. Russian investigators and prosecutors arrived at the scene for verification. The crawler tractor from the company crushed their car in an effort to disguise the discharge of waste, claims the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
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Svetlana Radionovová, head of the Rosprirodnadzor office in charge of nature protection, explained on social networks that the pouring of wastewater into the tundra was necessary to prevent an “emergency situation” when the level in the waste tank rose sharply after heavy rains. Norilsk spokesman Nickel claims that there is no danger of nature being polluted by waste and that the company is conducting an internal investigation.
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Norilsk Nickel caught dumping poisonous waste into rivers and tundra a month after the catastrophic 21,000 ton diesel leak. Company’s bulldozer was in such rush to dismantle pipes after being filmed by ecologists that it crashed a police car https://t.co/uDQR8MTkcZ pic.twitter.com/HM4Lm0QkDN
— The Siberian Times (@siberian_times) June 28, 2020
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At the end of May, a key company in Norilland was famous for a huge leak of oil fuel from a local power plant and heating plant into Arctic waters. On May 29, about 15,000 tons of fuel leaked from the tank of the Norilsk Nickel power plant and heating plant into the river system and another 6,000 tons into the subsoil. The scale of the current disaster is compared to the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident on the Alaska coast and is also considered the largest of its kind in the Arctic.
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The delay of local authorities so upset President Vladimir Putin that he insulted dignitaries on live television. The head of the company, billionaire Vladimir Potanin, promised to pay ten billion rubles (about 3.4 billion crowns) for the cleansing of nature.
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Norilsk, with a population of 180,000, lies about 300 kilometers behind the Arctic Circle. According to the responsible company, the cause of the recent giant oil accident was damage to the reservoir due to the thawing of the permafrost soil on which the city stands, as well as several other cities.
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The city was built around the Norilsk Nickel plant, which is the world’s leading producer of nickel, platinum and palladium.
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