However, the Norilsk Nickel factory denied any sort of leakage from its unit and also claimed that the river is back to it’s normal colour.
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The mayor of Norilsk, where the average annual temperature is below 15 degrees Fahrenheit, said that there is no danger to drinking water, as the city’s water supply does not come from the Daldykyn.
The location of the remote spot which lies inside the Arctic Circle is close to a metals factory, the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant, owned by Norilsk Nikel. Its mining and smelting operations annually release 500 tons each of copper and nickel oxides and 2 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the air.
Billionaire oligarch Vladimir Potanin is president of Norilsk Nickel. “It’s just a wasteland”.
Norilsk is also the northernmost city on Earth, with extreme weather conditions, two months of polar night in winter, and eight to nine months of snow every year. It mines a fifth of the world’s nickel and more than half of its palladium, a metal used in vehicle exhausts and jewellery.
Norilsk is known for its heavy pollution, which is often considered the worst in Russian Federation.
Norilsk in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It’s not clear what kind of nickel processing was used at the metals plant, Chambers says, but it’s known that some types of high-temperature or pressure oxidation processes turn any sulfide minerals into iron oxide. The Daldykan river is located near the city and it is not hard to see the red water.
Photos that circulated on Russian social media showed sections of the river that more resembled a stop light or a firetruck.
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“A leak into the river from the Nadezhda factory”, the Norilsk resident Yekaterina Basalyga wrote under two pictures of the river on her Instagram account. You get scared when you see this.
