Russian Arctic: enrichment plant releases wastewater into the wild

Text by: RFI Follow

Russian mining giant Nornickel announced on Sunday that it had suspended several of its employees responsible for dumping wastewater from one of its ore beneficiation plants in the Arctic.

Publicity

With our correspondent in Moscow,Léo Vidal-Giraud

The same region, the Russian Arctic, the same company, Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), and a new disaster that strangely recalls that of May 29, when the collapse of a fuel tank had discharged into a Siberian river 21,000 tons of diesel .

This time, it is industrial waste, 6,000 cubic meters of wastewater that the employees of a raw materials enrichment plant voluntarily dumped in the Taiga. It was, according to testimony on the spot, an operation to avoid a tank rupture.

Risk of contamination

But an operation contrary to all ecological and safety standards. "  It is a gross violation of our procedures,  " denounced Norilsk Nickel, who quickly announced the layoff of the employees at fault and said that the rejection was stopped and the situation under control.

The services of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations on the spot, quoted by the public agency Ria Novosti, however, raised the risk of contamination of the nearby Kharaïakh River by toxic substances.

However, activists from Greenpeace and the opposition newspaper Novaïa Gazeta had to raise the national alarm for the company to react. This raises questions about the ecological risk that the industrial activity of Norilsk Nickel poses to the entire Russian Arctic.

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• Russia
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