The Norilsk Nickel Company
Sounds like a wonderful place to spend some time.
From the
BBC News:
Toxic truth of secretive Siberian city
A BBC team has entered a remote region of Russia normally closed to foreigners that produces almost half the world's supply of palladium - a precious metal vital for making catalytic converters. But, as the BBC's Richard Galpin reports, it is accused of being the world's largest producer of acid rain.
It took more than two months for the Russian authorities to grant us permission to travel to the secretive Siberian city of Norilsk.
For decades it has been closed to foreigners (only briefly opening up in the late 1990s) because it is deemed to be a strategic region.
It was once ringed by silos containing intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But nowadays it has something else it wants to hide from the rest of the world - chronic pollution.
Toxic cocktail
From a distance it looks like a front of bad weather moving in and obscuring the otherwise pristine Arctic sky.
But drive closer and the source of the long streams of "cloud" flowing over the city and far beyond becomes clear.
To blame are the clusters of huge chimneys at three smelting plants which surround Norilsk.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the chimneys pump out a toxic cocktail of pollutants which the company responsible openly admits is mostly sulphur dioxide.
Once in the atmosphere this gas turns into acid rain.
The company Norilsk Nickel - currently worth about $34bn (£17bn) - also admits that other pollutants including heavy metals are being pumped out, though in far smaller quantities.
Lots more info and pictures at the BBC article. They say that they are making efforts to reduce pollution but I am betting that this is just lip service with no real action. The article says that the company made $2Billion
NET profit in the first six months of last year and there are 30 more years worth of ore at the mine.
Posted by DaveH at April 8, 2007 2:46 PM