Scientists and representatives of Russian mining giant Nornickel were brought together last week at the Norilsk Industrial Institute (NII) in the world's northernmost city to discuss permafrost studies, which are vital for safety of the region's housing and industrial facilities.
"Nornickel has interacted, is interacting and will continue to interact with scientists," the company's Polar Division deputy chief engineer, Anton Pryamitsky, told the 2nd scientific and technical conference "Experience and prospects for the construction of buildings and structures on permafrost soils" hosted by NII.
NII boasts a permafrost laboratory, which monitors foundations of objects in residential areas of Norilsk.
According to Zhanna Petukhova, director of NII's Research Center for Construction Technologies and Monitoring of Buildings and Structures in the Arctic, necessary equipment for the permafrost laboratory was bought by Nornickel.
The lab's chief, Mikhail Elesin, who has tested the equipment during an expedition to the archipelagos of Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land, told the participants and guests of the forum about the geophysical research in these regions.
Since last summer, the institute has been working on creating a unique interactive map of Norilsk. There is no such map in any other city built on permafrost soil. NII carried out the detailing of the roadmap for the installation of "smart" geothermal tubes. Three-dimensional survey of the talik, a layer of year-round unfrozen ground, in the basement soils makes it possible to obtain an objective cut of data on thawed zones and the degree of reliability of foundations in high-risk areas.
It is worth noting that Nornickel is regularly upgrading the system of geotechnical monitoring of industrial facilities. Back in 2020, the company announced its intention to study the permafrost in Norilsk in depth, and created a unified permafrost monitoring service to track all possible changes in real time and regularly assess the condition of the foundations of industrial facilities, and in the future, residential buildings.
About a hundred buildings in Norilsk require special attention. In general, the monitoring service had 439 buildings on permafrost control, as of 2021. In order to constantly monitor their condition, a geotechnical monitoring system is being introduced on the territory of the Nornickel's Norilsk Division.
Most buildings are equipped with sensors for soil temperature, underground moisture, and inclinometers to monitor structural deviations. Measuring instruments are connected into an information and analytical system, which, based on data, helps the center's specialists make decisions about the further operation of buildings.
Norilsk Nickel purchased geophysical equipment for the diagnostic center worth 19.5 million rubles (some $230,000). Having reliable information, experts will be able to make a timely decision on the need for a particular repair, a way to keep buildings operating. In the future, the geotechnical monitoring system will be able to receive satellite imagery of the state of the territory's surface thanks to cooperation with Russian space agency Roscosmos, Nornickel's Pryamitsky said.
NII rector Dmitry Dubrov hopes that the conference would become regular and help train local permafrost scientists, whose expertise is vital for the future of Norilsk's development.
