Why is Krasnoyarsk so bad with the ecology?
Some argue that in a few decades it will become impossible to live in the city.
Krasnoyarsk is consistently in the top of environmental anti-ratings. So, according to the Rosstat bulletin “Key indicators of environmental protection”, it is one of the ten cities in Russia with the largest amount of pollutant emissions into the atmosphere.
| City | Air pollutant emissions, thousand tons |
| Norilsk | 1 959.5 |
| Moscow | 995, 4 |
| St. Petersburg | 488.2 |
| Cherepovets | 364.5 |
| Lipetsk | 322.9 |
| Novokuznetsk | 321 |
| Omsk | 291.6 |
| Angarsk | 278.5 |
| Magnitogorsk | 255.7 |
| Krasnoyarsk | 233.8 |
| Chelyabinsk | 233.4 |
| Yekaterinburg | 203.5 |
It would seem that only 10th place, but the statistics of Rosstat poorly takes into account the structure of emissions. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the main pollutant is transport - its emissions are usually less hazardous than those of heavy industry enterprises. Rosstat does not publish data on the degree of concentration of harmful substances in the atmosphere - and for this indicator, Krasnoyarsk is in second place under many authors - immediately after Norilsk.
Krasnoyarsk, together with Omsk, shares the title of the dirtiest million-plus city in Russia. The environmental topic is so important that it hardly leaves the pages of the media and the speeches of politicians, and independent associations have been created to monitor the cleanliness of the surrounding air.
Oncological statistics are also unfavorable. Neoplasms occupy second place in mortality statistics - they account for about 18% of total deaths. In the structure of cancers, neoplasms of the respiratory system and digestive system predominate. According to the statement of the Krasnoyarsk editorial office of the N1.ru portal, if you don’t take 70 years of environmental protection to take, cancer will grow so much that the city will become completely unsuitable for life.
Who is to blame and is it possible to fix the environmental situation in the city?
Is Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant so terrible as people thinks?
In general, Krasnoyarsk ecologists are traditionally divided into two groups - radical and moderate. The dream of the first is the complete closure of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum smelter (abbreviated KRAZ, part of the Rusal Group). The giant, built in the 1960s, is the largest in Russia and the second largest in the world in terms of primary aluminum production. Aluminum is a metal whose production, by definition, cannot be environmentally friendly (things are worse with nickel - hence Norilsk’s leadership in the rating above).
The main technological process at aluminum smelters is the electrolysis of alumina (aluminum oxide) - the so-called Hall-Eru process. Aluminum oxide is in a highly bound form, to break this connection, huge electric capacities are required (70% of the capacities of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station are used to service the plant). Steel bars are used to supply voltage to the cathode, and suspended bars serve as anodes.
Depending on the type of anode, there are two main production technologies - the so-called self-firing anodes (Soderberg anodes) and prebaked anodes.
The technology of prebaked anodes was historically the first, however, in 1920, Soderberg revolutionized the industry by inventing the technology of self-baking anodes, which allowed a sharp increase in production volume and cost reduction. This technology was used by USSR, in which at that time there was no aluminum industry (during the First World War, the tsarist government purchased aluminum abroad). Using Soderberg’s technology, all Soviet aluminum smelters were built, including two giants, the Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk aluminum smelters, erected in the 1960s.
However, the main disadvantage of Soderberg’s anodes is the environmental impact. During the operation of the electrolyzer, fluoride substances are formed (diseases caused by an excess of fluorine - a typical trace of aluminum production), carbon monoxide, benzopyrene (the strongest carcinogen belonging to the highest class of hazardous elements). Previously, they practically did not think about it, but over time, the advanced technology of prebaked anodes took revenge. The Sayan Aluminum Plant, launched in 1985, was already designed on the basis of the prebake anode method. Prebaked anodes are used in the world in the construction of all new aluminum smelters - today they account for 90% of the world's primary aluminum production. The remaining 10% is primarily the Soviet plants of Rusal - Krasnoyarsk, Bratsk, Novokuznetsk.
As a result, in the Krasnoyarsk, Rusal is a constant target for ecologists and the public. This is not to say that the company is not doing anything in this direction. The manufacturer has improved the technology of self-baking anodes - the so-called "Environmental Soderberg" has appeared. The cost of modernization amounted to about 300 million dollars. Funds were also invested in the gas treatment system - the combination of these measures allowed us to reduce the amount of fluoride emissions.
A full transition to pre-baked anodes would cost 5 times more - in fact, high capital costs for modernizing the enterprise are the main reason why the company cannot afford a complete rejection of outdated technology.
Instead, Rusal continues to study the technology of inert anodes - the company hopes that due to this it will be possible to further reduce the ecological footprint of the enterprise. Oleg Deripaska's holding also likes to emphasize that it is the cleanest producer in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. But here the reason is not the electrolyzer, but the electricity generated at the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric station. Unlike Kraz, factories of the world leader in aluminum production - China - use much less environmentally friendly coal generation.
How does the volume of air emissions change during the year?
In Russia, strangers rarely organize to defend common interests. Trade union organizations, industry associations, partnerships of homeowners - this is definitely not about our country. Usually we are forced to unite only what directly affects our lives. For example, their interests are usually defended by a united front unless deceived equity holders - the price of the issue is too high. The associations of citizens in the defense of the environment are clearly something not from the domestic reality.
The more surprising is the example of Krasnoyarsk. Several volunteers led by Igor Shpekht joined together and created the project Nebo.live . Money was collected for a common bank account, they bought pollution sensors, installed them throughout the city. The results of the observation can be viewed online on a specially created site. Surprisingly, this is currently the only online environmental monitoring system in the city - government agencies come to the post in the old fashioned way, take measurements, take samples to the laboratory and only then publish the results of measurements.
Before launching the project, Rusal was the main enemy of environmentally-minded activists. But as a result of the observation, it became clear that it was not only he who was to blame - the concentration of harmful substances in the atmosphere increases particularly strongly in winter - aluminum production does not have a pronounced seasonality. According to activist, these statistics strongly correlate with the timing of the heating season in the city.
Coal house heating
Coal makes its significant contribution to the environmental situation in the Krasnoyarsk. This may surprise you greatly, but gas pipelines bypass one of the largest cities in Siberia.
The millionaire city on the Yenisei is simply not gasified!
This fact has several explanations. Krasnoyarsk is located in the south of Eastern Siberia, while the main domestic oil and gas fields - in Western Siberia - primarily in the Tyumen region and the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug.
Talks about the need for gas supply in Krasnoyarsk are periodically resumed - as one of the ways to solve the environmental problems of the city. However, first of all it is expensive and the region itself (without the help of the federal authorities) is unlikely to pull such a project. But even if you find the money, then large-scale capital investments in the gasification of the region will lead to a sharp increase in prices for heating and electricity - a return on these investments in a reasonable time is impossible without price increases. The population, of course, constantly demands to solve environmental problems - but as far as it is ready to pay for it out of its own pocket - apparently Krasnoyarsk politicians have no confidence in this.
We must not forget that the Krasnoyarsk Region historically depends on coal - in the region there are huge reserves of this mineral, the cost of its production is low. As a result, the transition to gas means for the region the loss of jobs in the coal industry and the loss of its own market for domestic producers, which will have to be given to Tyumen gas workers.
Krasnoyarsk Coal Energy
As a result, the basis of the city’s energy today is made up of several large coal-fired power plants of the Siberian Generating Company (part of Andrey Melnichenko’s SUEK Group), as well as many small private boiler houses. Coal generation massively supplies extremely harmful sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere of the city.
The private sector around the city, small shopping centers, small industries - without gas, their options for choosing a heating scheme are very limited. Electric heating makes any home almost golden; firewood is only suitable for heating summer cottages. As a result, coal remains the only viable alternative, with all its known environmental costs.
Low coal heating pipes in Krasnoyarsk
The problem with mini-boiler rooms and private stoves is also that their pipes are usually located at a low height. As a result, they carry out all the main emissions in the area of direct human activity. And even on them, unlike large professional thermal power plants, often even primitive cleaning agents are missing.
Actually, in practice, any debate about environmental problems in Krasnoyarsk comes down to a clash of two opinions. Radical ecologists, as well as many residents see the cause of all the troubles of Rusal and the coal power plants of the SUEK Group. In turn, many representatives of the authorities and the companies mentioned above argue that small thermal power plants with low pipes and a high level of motorization are to blame (in Krasnoyarsk one of the highest rates in the country in terms of the number of cars per capita). Another factor often mentioned is the quality of gasoline - supposedly, at many small gasoline stations it does not meet technical standards, and the environmental consequences of using such gasoline are much worse. As a result, a typical proposal for improving the environment in the city is to strengthen control over small economic entities.
But the game of pulling the ball, beloved by both parties, weakly contributes to a constructive solution to the problem.
It is clear to everyone that Rusal with SUEK and small boiler houses and cars negatively affect it. The debate is about the proportions of such an influence. The value of the chart below is that it was posted on the official portal of the government of the Krasnoyarsk Region:
Sources of harmful emissions into the atmosphere of Krasnoyarsk
An important conclusion follows from the graph. Motor transport accounts for only a third of all emissions. This is not typical for megacities, where transport exhausts usually prevail. For example, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, motor transport accounts for about 90% of all atmospheric pollution. In Krasnoyarsk, on the other hand (even according to official statistics, which not everyone is accustomed to trust) - half of the pollution is the result of the aluminum plant and the three largest thermal power plants.
It is important to understand that automotive emissions and industrial emissions are completely different things. Cars send mainly carbon oxides (carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) and nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere, while the main result of coal combustion is a much more dangerous sulfur oxide. According to statistics cited by the state-owned newspaper Our Krasnoyarsk Region, sulfur oxide emissions account for about 20% of total pollution (second after carbon oxides). This is another noticeable trace of coal energy in the ecology of the city.
In general, calling cars the most important cause of poor ecology in a particular city is bad taste. Cars are everywhere, somewhere a little more, somewhere a little less. But look again at the list of the dirtiest cities in Russia - Norilsk, Cherepovets, Litsetsk, Novokuznetsk, Omsk, Angarsk, Magnitogorsk, Krasnoyarsk and Chelyabinsk. These are, first of all, the largest centers of industry (primarily metallurgical). Cars really make a difference only in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Atmospheric inversion
But the reason is not only in Rusal and coal energy. Many environmental researchers have noted the "wrong" zone of fluoride distribution in the atmosphere of Krasnoyarsk. Fluorides are a typical type of emissions characteristic of the aluminum industry. Other enterprises in the city do not produce such emissions in any significant quantities. Krasnoyarsk aluminum smelter is located in the north-east of the city, winds are mainly south-west. As a result, higher fluoride concentrations in certain parts of the city can be expected. But this does not happen - their concentration are generally evenly distributed throughout the city. Why does it happen?
Krasnoyarsk is located as if in a bowl - hills surround the city from all sides, and it is located in a lowland
As a result, the city has weak air exchange - harmful substances produced by industry are delayed here for a long time. You can give the opposite example - Naberezhnye Chelny. The city, built around a large automobile factory, is one of the most environmentally friendly in Russia. Basically - due to successful air exchange. But in the case of Krasnoyarsk, the matter is not only and not so much in it. To explain better, you will have to remember some basic things from the school physics course. Convection is the heat transfer process inside a substance (liquid or gas). For example, if inside a certain vessel you heat a certain part of the substance, then gradually the remaining parts of the substance also heat up due to this. The fact is that warm molecules become lighter and therefore rise up, and heavier cold molecules come in their place. In a closed loop at some point, the temperature in the substance equalizes.
Similar processes occur in the atmosphere. In this case, the heat source is usually the earth's surface - automobiles, industrial enterprises. Heat is gradually transferred vertically upwards - into higher layers of the atmosphere. As a result of these processes, a uniform temperature gradient is usually formed - the higher above ground level, the lower the temperature.
But due to a number of meteorological effects in some places, the opposite situation may arise - in some layers of the atmosphere, with an increase in altitude, the temperature, on the contrary, increases, not decreases. Under these conditions, the normal law of convection is violated - the warm air located above, rising upward, stumbles on even warmer air - and cannot rise higher. If, under conditions of temperature inversion, for example, a fire is lit, then the smoke, having reached a certain height, will begin to move horizontally. The main ecological “attraction” of Krasnoyarsk - the famous black sky - owes much to this effect.
Black sky in Krasnoyarsk
Temperature inversions sometimes occur in cities on the ocean coast, inside the mainland they are on average less frequent and not so well studied. Krasnoyarsk is a rather rare example of a mainland city, where similar weather anomalies occur quite often. The physics of these phenomena is quite complex - not so long ago, Novosibirsk researchers received megagrant to build a model of atmospheric flow in the Krasnoyarsk. Perhaps the results of this study will help to significantly revise the environmental program.
An important role in this atmospheric history is played by the never-freezing (due to the proximity of the hydroelectric power station) Yenisei. Water, due to its physical properties, keeps heat much longer. Therefore, in the 30-degree frost, the Yenisei, along with industrial enterprises and automobiles, becomes an additional source of heat on the surface. As a result, surface heat becomes even greater precisely in the winter, when the temperature difference between water and air increases - this is another fact that could explain the higher level of pollution in the winter.
Due to its geographical location (hills around) and atmospheric inversions, the city is often compared to a closed pan lid - all substances that are produced in this pan remain in it and do not go upstairs. And the residents of Krasnoyarsk have no choice but to cook daily in this pan from carbon oxides, sulfur, nitrogen and fluorides.
Oncological setting
Another important complaint of city residents to the authorities is that poor ecology leads to a high incidence of cancer. Is this really so?
Unfortunately, in Russia everything is very bad with medical statistics - it is too scarce and can not always be trusted. Mortality statistics by type of disease are published by Rosstat in the context of the constituent entities of the federation, and not cities - for such a huge region as Krasnoyarsk, this can greatly distort the final conclusions. One way or another, according to statistics on mortality from neoplasms (in terms of 100 thousand of the population, data for 2015), Krasnoyarsk Territory is in 19th place in Russia - of course, this is far from the best indicator, but this is not the first place.
It is important to understand that trying to link the ecology in the city and the incidence of cancer based on Rosstat data is basically a utopian task. And the point here is not only the lack of data with the required detail according to the territorial principle. Cancer is too diverse a disease. The factors that cause it vary greatly depending on the type of cancer. Somewhere, a risk factor is the consumption of certain foods, somewhere - the occurrence of potentially dangerous substances in the earth's crust, somewhere - a certain way of life of a person, and somewhere else a hereditary factor. Therefore, it is advisable to analyze a specific type of oncology.
Such data in Russia are published by the Herzen Moscow Cancer Research Institute - the latest data are available for 2015. The environment is most closely associated with lung cancer, as well as some types of cancers of the digestive system. The standardized incidence rate of lung cancer in men (the main risk zone for this type of cancer) in the Krasnoyarsk Territory was 66 cases per 100,000 population (the average in Russia is 50 cases). The standardized incidence rate of gastric cancer is 27 cases versus 22 on average in Russia.
A similar conclusion is reached in interview chief oncologist of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Andrei Modestov. He confirms that the oncology incidence statistics in the region are indeed slightly higher than the national average, but not some extremely high. He calls the main reason for the increased incidence of high temperature differences in the region - on average, it wears out immunity faster, which is the main defender of the body against cancer cells.
As a result, there really is a problem, but it is hardly extreme. We make a reservation that this interview is said about the region as a whole, there is not much information about the city - in Russia, in principle, they do not like to share medical statistics in a territorial context. But besides cancer, there are other diseases - for example, allergies and bronchial asthma are a much more likely companion to a bad ecology than neoplasms.
What to do?
The city constantly discusses many options for solving the environmental problem. There are expensive city gasification projects or the “Freezing Yenisei” project. Constantly fighting low emissions from small boiler houses. The environmental programs of Rusal and heat power companies are being implemented.
The city is unique in its own way - in one place a lot of factors came together that negatively affect the environmental situation.
Perhaps the most difficult and incomprehensible is the fight against atmospheric inversions. By learning to open the lid of the “pan”, the city will be able to breath better.
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