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Mines/Russia

Norilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel) mine

Norilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel) mine, Russia. Producing, open pit and underground, mining nickel, copper, platinum, cobalt.

Why Norilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel) is famous

Nornickel's Norilsk-Taimyr operations in Siberia. USGS records the company as responsible for 99.3% of Russia's marketable cobalt in 2020-21.1,2

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 23 June 1935Construction of Norilsk combine begins3

What kind of deposit

Magmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulphide

Norilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel) today

Where nickel is mined todayWhere copper is mined todayWhere platinum is mined todayWhere cobalt is mined todayMining in Russia

Where next

Mines

Same kind of depositCopper Cliff Mine (Sudbury)Norilsk's nickel complex began in 1935. Copper Cliff opened in 1886.1

Events

Led toConstruction of Norilsk combine beginsRead what happened near Norilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel): Construction of Norilsk combine begins.1

Places

Located inNorilskNorilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel) is about 11 km from Norilsk.1

Deposit types

An example ofMagmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulphideNorilsk-Taimyr (Nornickel) belongs to the magmatic nickel-copper-pge sulphide family of deposits.4

Sources

  1. Minerals Yearbook 2020-21, volume III: The Mineral Industry of Russia US Geological Survey
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  3. Building Norilsk, chapter 7 of The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag Hoover Institution Press (S. Ertz)
  4. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Pictures: Escondida Mine, Chile, NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Elektrisk malmletning. Undersökningar på Billiton, 1920., Okänd / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).