What products does the Crimean Titan plant produce? Residents of northern Crimea are being poisoned by the Titan plant, - ecologist

The Crimean Titan has posed an environmental threat since its launch in 1971. News from Northern Crimea does not bring joy.
The occupation administration of Crimea, having finally recognized the fact of a man-made environmental disaster and taking measures to evacuate the population, has not yet announced a clear program for localizing and eliminating atmospheric pollution by sulfur dioxide. Moreover, at first the source of the appearance of this sulfur dioxide in the air was not clearly identified. And only when the evacuation of children from the suffocating Armyansk had already begun, the occupiers almost in a whisper admitted that the “unknown gas” posing a threat to the population was most likely sulfur dioxide (SO2), and the dried-up settling tank of the titanium dioxide plant was “to blame” for the release. now PJSC " Crimean titan"(branch of the company "Ukrainian Chemical Products"), located eight kilometers north of Armyansk, near the border with the Kherson region.

The Crimean Titan plant and its settling tank on the map of the Perekop Isthmus of Crimea
(according to Wikimapia)

One glance at the map is enough to understand that in any wind except the north, residents of the Kherson, Nikolaev and Zaporozhye regions will be able to enjoy the aromas of sulfur dioxide (and with it refreshing acid rain), and with a steady north wind, poison can cover almost the entire Crimea, which is also ours, no matter what the occupiers mumble there. I hope that the settling tank evaporation will not be enough for longer-distance emissions, but even without that there will be plenty of headaches for the citizens of Ukraine.

"Titan" occupied

The section of the North Crimean Canal located in the occupation zone, from which the Russian authorities could try to pump water into the dried-up waste reservoir, is empty. There may not be enough rain to fill an open septic tank with an area of ​​about 42 square kilometers - millions of cubic meters are needed to cover the dry bottom with even a thin layer of water. For the same reason, the statement of the pro-Russian Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksenov about his intention to build a water pipeline in two months to pump water from the Karkinitsky Bay to a reservoir does not add optimism: “60 thousand cubic meters per day, despite the fact that we need to supply 15 million cubic meters of water to this reservoir . During the month - 1.8 million cubic meters. So far at this pace. Maybe there will be two threads,” Interfax quotes Aksenov as saying.

And this despite the fact that, according to the so-called “Minister of Ecology and natural resources Crimea" by Gennady Naraev, "Crimean Titan" normally consumes 49 thousand cubic meters of water per day, which, after the closure of the North Crimean Canal, is taken, apparently, from artesian wells. A simple calculation shows that even without taking into account the constant evaporation of water from an open sump, filling it will require at least six months.

At the same time, although Armyansk is being evacuated and the plant is shut down, there is no real solution to the problem with the already accumulated toxic waste.
Russian figures habitually blame Ukraine for the current situation (well, how could we not!), stating that “...the release of a dangerous substance in the north of Crimea occurred due to the fact that Ukraine cut off the water supply through the North Crimean Canal.” Kyiv, reasonably expecting a gas attack from the east wind and acid rain in the Kherson region, places responsibility on the Russian occupation authorities. The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine accused the Russian army of releasing chemicals into the territory of the annexed Crimea, and a journalist from a Russian TV channel found the culprits among the Ukrainian oligarchs, whose actions “... led to the release of chemicals into the atmosphere at the Crimean Titan plant in Armyansk and the subsequent environmental disaster in the north of the peninsula " (It remains only to decide whether Dmitry, the main owner of the Crimean Titan shares, is considered a Ukrainian oligarch - or still a Russian one?)
Soviet past

Considering that during the entire period of Ukraine’s independence, no one was seriously concerned about solving the problem of Titan waste, the preconditions for the trouble are actually older than the Russian occupation. Ecological disaster in the north of Crimea would have happened in any case and under any incompetent government. What happened was not the result of the intrigues of the occupiers or a conspiracy against the invaders. And not even the result of indifference and carelessness (although no one has canceled the responsibility of the relevant control departments for the disaster). It’s just that the time has come for the time bomb, planted by the stubborn builders of communism, to explode. And this environmental bomb could not fail to explode - simply by definition. AND big question- Was it even possible to neutralize it in advance?

The builders of the Crimean titanium dioxide plant probably felt their responsibility to the future, but not to us. The Soviet government, which considered itself to have no alternative, was not particularly willing to look more than five years ahead. That is, the talk was always either about the unimaginably distant future with flights to Alpha Centauri, or about “decisive, defining and final” - this is what the newspapers called the third, fourth and fifth years of the five-year plans according to which the USSR lived. What fell outside the immediate time period was automatically equated in relevance to intergalactic flights in the minds of Soviet people. That is, it felt like something not from the reality they were interested in. Getting bothered by some vague future problem, which the next generations, of course, will somehow sort out, and no one would even think of disrupting the grandiose plans for building socialism because of it. The party said - it’s necessary, the people said - yeah, and the future will somehow resolve itself.

KGPO "Titan" produced its first products in 1971: ammophos, aluminum sulfate, liquid glass, red iron acid pigments and, most importantly, pigment titanium dioxide. The initial capacity of the enterprise is 40 thousand tons per year, since 2002 - 80 thousand tons. This is 2% of the world's titanium dioxide production. The main buyer is Russia.

With the sulfate (sulfite) method of processing ilmenite, from which titanium dioxide is obtained, as it is written in a university textbook from those times (!), per 1 ton finished products comes in the form of waste “... up to 4 tons of ferrous sulfate and up to 5 cubic meters of hydrolytic acid containing 20% ​​sulfuric acid, 10% ferrous sulfate... and sulfates of impurities. Disposal of this waste in large factories poses a major problem" (emphasis added - Author)"

So: this problem was never solved, even after doubling production volumes. Until recently, “Titan” worked “in the Soviet way,” in the expectation that the next generations would figure something out, or in the blissful dreams that all this chemistry would somehow resolve itself. And it could work because then, in 1969, wise Soviet leaders, when designing the Crimean Titan, chose a place for its construction that was equipped with a natural acid reservoir.

Chemical future

After all, why was the plant built in Perekop? After all, the raw materials for it were transported from the Irshansky and Volnogorsk mining and processing plants (both in the Zhytomyr region), 700 km away. And the products were generally sent to Russia. Labor resources they also had to be brought - in fact, this is how Armyansk, the city of Crimean chemists, appeared. Electricity supply, water pipeline, railway line to the chemical plant - all this was built due to the fact that there was no need to build a huge acid settling tank at all - they simply fenced off the Sivash Bay with a dam (fortunately, nothing flows into the Rotten Sea and nothing flows out of it) - and voila ! Please dump this hellish mixture here in unlimited quantities! There is a lot of water in Sivash, the concentration of chemicals can remain harmless for a long time, and before that the acid will not begin to “steam”.

In those days, Sivash seemed eternal, like the same Aral, the fourth largest lake in the world. But the Aral Sea was completely destroyed in just fifty years. They destroyed it without malicious intent - cotton was needed, and the Politburo did not care much about the fact that the Syr Darya and Amu Darya were used to irrigate vast territories, reducing the water balance by 25 times. Descendants will still come up with something.

The result is visible on satellite images with the naked eye: the Aral Sea is no more. And independent Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are reaping this result.

And we are reaping the drop in the water level in Sivash and the sharply increased concentration of waste in the Titan sump. Thanks to the once beloved and forever considerate Politburo. And also to the enterprising Firtash. Well, to all of us, who in the decades since the collapse of the USSR have not done anything in the sense of foresight. I didn't think so. I didn't insist. Didn't demand it. Our fault, our misfortune.

USSR in our heads

By the way, talk about trouble. About the one who has not yet arrived, but is already knocking.

In Ukraine there is another producer of titanium dioxide, also using sulfite technology - Sumykhimprom. It has less power than the Crimean Titan, but also works with an open acid accumulator. And local residents, like residents of Armyansk in previous years, periodically complain about emissions - apparently, emissions of the same sulfur dioxide. They complained in 2015, then in 2016, and then in 2017.

It’s good that the Sumy region has a more humid climate than the Sivash region, and the acid reservoir has not yet dried up, but the moment when the concentration of waste exceeds the calculated maximum will inevitably come. Maybe even in our lifetime. So what then?

Maybe it’s time to get rid of the USSR in our heads and start seriously worrying about the future of our children?

The owner of the plant, Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash, is under house arrest in Austria. Titan can be modernized using government funds, but then it will go to the state. Another option is bankruptcy of the enterprise

The Crimean Titan plant in Armyansk may be nationalized. The authorities of the peninsula reported this. At the end of August, a toxic substance was released at the enterprise, after which children were evacuated from the city. What is happening to the plant in the north of Crimea?

All the Crimean Titan furnaces were extinguished on September 9. It was planned that it would only last for two weeks, that is, in a few days it should start working. No one knows whether this will happen. Workers at the enterprise say that salaries are not paid on time. And what will happen next is unknown, plant worker Vitaly told Business FM:

— How are things going at the enterprise now, are there any delays in wages?

— There are delays.

- How long do they say it will last?

- Yes (obscene) knows him.

— Well, is management somehow trying to communicate with you on this topic?

- Apparently not.

- What do they even say about his fate?

- I have no idea.

When a toxic substance was released in Crimean Armyansk and the plant was stopped, there were statements that it would not start working until it was modernized. And this will clearly take more than two weeks. And modernization, judging by the statements of the Crimean authorities, has not yet begun.

The plant has an owner - Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash. He is now under house arrest in Austria, and he probably has no time for “Crimean Titan.” Perhaps they will modernize it using government funds. But then, as the head of Crimea Sergei Aksenov promised, the enterprise will be transferred to the state. How and when his fate will be decided is still unclear. He speaks about the importance of the plant for Armyansk former employee Andrey:

Andrey former employee of the Crimean Titan plant“Well, what will happen? How can you imagine how many people work at the plant - 4,500. If the plant shuts down and approximately 4,000 people remain unemployed, right? It’s not 100 people.”

Andrei’s mother Tatyana still works at the plant. She added one more detail. Allegedly, the company’s accounts have been frozen:

“They should at least decide something for us, as long as people work.” If they decide, they won’t explain anything to anyone, they won’t tell anyone anything.

— Are there any delays with salaries? Is everything paid on time?

- Well, there was no delay only this month. They gave it completely, oddly enough. And then we don’t know how it will happen.

— Does your management explain anything?

— There were delays... Well, they explain: all accounts have been frozen, that’s all they explain.

There is no public information about the seizure of accounts. Business FM was unable to contact the management of the plant. By the way, if anything is being modernized now, it’s its official website - it’s under reconstruction. It was also impossible to reach Firtash’s representative by phone.

But it is known that VTB recently sued its Kyiv structure, to which the plant is registered, in Moscow. And he sued her for $46 million. This is a loan plus interest - the bank issued the loan to Firtash’s company three years ago.

The legal side is generally very interesting. Once upon a time the plant was registered in Armyansk. After the annexation of Crimea, it was re-registered in Kyiv so that exports would not stop due to sanctions. The final beneficiary is a Cypriot company. But the plant itself was leased to a Moscow company. And now they want to nationalize it altogether. How to do this?

Director of the Moscow office of Tax Consulting UK“The plant has environmental problems. He cannot solve them. Apparently, the plant should be fined for these problems. Accordingly, in this way the plant will have debt if it cannot pay off these fines. Accordingly, if he cannot pay off these fines, obviously, the plant should be declared bankrupt. Well, it will already have a new owner.”

— There was a release of sulfur dioxide in Armyansk. Where does it come from and in what technological processes participates?

— In this city there is a large chemical production- “Crimean Titan”. This plant produces titanium dioxide TiO2, which is used in many industries national economy, including in baby powders. To produce it and other substances, including sulfates, this plant uses a lot of sulfuric acid. It is important that there is a so-called acid settling tank, or acid accumulator, in which sulfuric acid waste accumulates, including already used sulfuric acid.

Sulfuric acid is a product of the reaction of sulfuric anhydride SO3 with water. And sulfuric anhydride is produced from sulfur dioxide SO2, which in turn is obtained by oxidation of sulfur.

This is important because if the water concentration in the acid settling tank suddenly begins to decrease,

then sulfur and sulfur dioxide anhydrides fly into the air.

In order for sulfuric and sulfurous anhydrides to exist there in the form of liquid acids, it is necessary large number water. If the sump is under the direct rays of the hot Crimean sun with a lack of rain, and there was heat in Crimea this summer, all the water would fly away. Following it, sulfur and sulfur dioxide anhydrides flew away in a gaseous state.

- How far can they travel?

— It all depends on the wind. Such “chemical satellites of the Earth” enter the atmosphere from various sources. Sulfur dioxide, for example, comes from the pipes of thermal power plants that burn coal; it used to fly out of car exhaust pipes. In the absence of rain, the toxic gas rising into the atmosphere is picked up by the wind and carried in the direction the wind blows. As it was in Chernobyl - when the south wind rose,

and radioactive isotopes were carried to Scandinavia, where they first fell.

— How dangerous is sulfur dioxide for health?

— Sulfur dioxide, getting into respiratory tract, causes chronic bronchitis. These are tumors in the throat, and if the poisoning occurs for several years, then the tumors

Benign ones can turn into malignant and cause throat cancer.

However, one time will not cause any cancer. This is not the case in Armyansk yet. Sulfur dioxide does not have the properties of accumulation in the body, since when it enters the body, it dissolves in the aqueous phase, turns into acid and is excreted naturally.

— You are an expert on chemical safety, what do you think: the use of open acid storage tanks is not barbaric and complies with internationally accepted standards?

“If the condition of this acid reservoir was monitored and not allowed to dry out, it would not be barbaric. In the world, such storage tanks are used, but they are done more competently - they are concreted to avoid groundwater pollution and soil acidification. There are similar places in Russia and all over the world. There was a case in Romania when an Australian entrepreneur, who bought a gold mine, built a similar cyanide storage facility in a mountain bowl. He was warned that this was a seismically dangerous area and this could not be done, and if it shook, everything would spill first into the Tisa River, and then into the Danube.

The storage tank burst at the moment when it was filled to the top. Everything flowed into the Tisa, from it into the Danube, all the fish floated upside down, it was an environmental disaster.

— Is it true that children are especially susceptible to the effects of sulfur dioxide?

- They are especially susceptible for a simple reason. These gases are heavy and tend to settle towards the ground, and at low altitudes children receive higher concentrations than adults. The main principle is to prevent this from happening and, in an emergency, to stop people coming into contact with the toxic substance. Therefore, it is necessary to take children away from this emission. The plant cannot be opened until the acid storage tank is restored to normal condition. Aksenov is already ready to transport water there from Karkinitsky Bay - this is an elementary thing that the plant should have done itself.

— What precautions would you recommend to local residents?

— Only eight-layer gauze dressings in rooms where windows and doors are open. Try not to go outside until monitoring data shows normal concentrations. If they let water into the acid storage tank, the wind will blow and in two days it will all be carried away.

The Crimean Titan plant, located on the Russian-annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, has completely stopped production. This became known on Sunday, September 9. In recent weeks, harmful emissions from the plant have caused chemical air pollution in the north of the peninsula and in the neighboring Kherson region, causing health problems for local residents. As a result, children had to be evacuated from Armyansk, where the plant is located, as well as from the adjacent territories of mainland Ukraine. Why did this environmental disaster happen and will it be possible to carry out the much-needed modernization of the enterprise?

The causes of chemical air pollution have not yet been officially established. The Russian media and officials make accusations against Ukraine: they say that air pollution is associated with the drying out of the acid reservoir near the plant, which was a consequence of Kiev blocking the North Crimean Canal.

Before annexation, this canal largely supplied the water needs of the arid regions in the north of the peninsula. Toxic production waste is dumped into the acid storage tank at the Crimean Titan plant. Due to the partial drying of the reservoir, toxic substances, according to this version, began to spread in the air along with dust. The Ukrainian side, meanwhile, places responsibility for security on the Russian authorities, who control Crimea after the annexation, and appealed to international organizations asking them to look into the situation.

Representatives of the plant and officials reassure that the situation will soon return to normal. However, the risk of a recurrence of an environmental disaster in the north of Crimea remains high, experts say. The fact is that the environmental safety of production in Armyansk obviously does not meet modern environmental standards.

"In Germany, open storage tanks are not used in the production of titanium. After the production of titanium dioxide, what remains is the so-called diluted acid. About 20 years ago it was disposed of in the North Sea, but then it was banned. Today it is processed," German chemist professor noted in an interview with DW Axel Klein.

The prospects for modernizing production in Armyansk, however, look rather illusory. After all, after the annexation of the peninsula, “Crimean Titan” actually works in a legal vacuum. The enterprise is organized into two parallel structures. Formally, the plant still belongs to one registered in Kyiv joint stock company"Ukrainian Chemical Products", which is part of Dmitry Firtash's chemical holding Ostchem.

Firtash controls the plant through the German Ostchem Germany, the Austrian Ostchem Holding GmbH and the Cypriot Fleori Enterprises Ltd.

The founder of Ukrainian Chemical Products is the German company Ostchem Germany, which belongs to the Austrian Ostchem Holding GmbH. The ultimate owner is the Cypriot Fleori Enterprises Ltd. Thus, the Ukrainian Chemical Products company, through a number of companies in Germany, Austria and Cyprus, is controlled by billionaire Dmitry Firtash and the sister of the former head of the Presidential Administration of the times of Viktor Yanukovych, Yulia Lyovochkina. However, legally the Ukrainian company is at the moment does not manage Crimean Titan. In the summer of 2014, the plant was “leased” to the newly created Moscow company “Titanium Investments”.

According to data Russian registry legal entities (USRLE), this company belongs to the Cyprus company Letan Investments Limited. Its founder, according to the Cyprus registry, is general manager"Crimean Titan" Alexander Emelin. At the same time, Dmitry Firtash is the beneficiary.

At least this is indicated by data from the US Department of Justice, which also mentions the company Letan Investments Limited. The American Ministry of Justice studied the assets of the oligarch as part of a criminal investigation into corruption. Firtash himself has been in Austria since 2014 under recognizance not to leave, awaiting extradition to the United States.

Export via Switzerland

Obviously, a new parallel structure was created to work under sanctions. The fact is that to export the finished products of the plant, Ukrainian certificates of origin are needed. And get them to the Russian legal entity impossible. Nevertheless, the export of titanium dioxide produced in Armyansk to Western countries continues even after the annexation.

As DW has established, the distributor of Crimean Titan products in the West is the Swiss company Tolexis Enterprises AG, controlled by Firtash, registered in the canton of Zug. It sells products whose manufacturer is listed as Ukrainian Chemical Products. According to the Group DF holding, which includes this company, titanium dioxide is exported to more than 60 countries. However, according to the reports of Ukrainian Chemical Products, its export revenue is constantly declining, and its losses are growing.

One reason for this is logistical difficulties. Supplies of raw materials from mainland Ukraine to Crimea are prohibited by sanctions imposed by Kiev. In addition, Western sanctions prohibit ships from entering the ports of Crimea, while there is no railway connection from the peninsula to the mainland. As an investigation into the Ukrainian “Our Money” program released in the spring showed, raw materials are shipped from Ukrainian ports by ship. The destination on paper is ports in Russia. However, in the Kerch Strait, raw materials are reloaded and Russian ships are being taken to Crimea.

In order to reduce logistics costs, the management of the Titanium Investments company registered in Russia, according to Russian media, plans at its own expense to build a railway line by the end of 2019 that will connect the enterprise with the railway tracks, which by that time should connect the peninsula with Russia through the Kerch bridge. At the same time, funding for this construction is in question. After all, the financial position of Titanium Investments is disappointing: the company is unprofitable, as evidenced by the reporting in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

EU sanctions prohibit funding

It is unclear how the losses of Crimean Titan are covered. Dmitry Firtash's holding Group DF did not respond to DW's request about working under sanctions and the necessary investments in modernizing the plant. Finding a legal way to invest funds from parent companies in Crimean businesses will not be easy for Firtash. After all, they are all registered in EU countries: Germany, Austria and Cyprus. The funds of these companies, according to the US Department of Justice, are placed in banks in Cyprus, as well as in accounts in the Swiss division of Gazprombank. The ultimate owner of the Osthem holding is the offshore Cyprus company Fleori Enterprises Ltd.

In accordance with the 2014 EU sanctions decree, European companies are prohibited from entering into agreements to provide loans or credit to structures in Crimea or Sevastopol. In addition, “participation in loan agreements,” that is, for example, providing guarantees for loans, is also prohibited. And this makes it difficult for Titanium Investments to obtain loans from Russian banks. “We are dealing with a legal gray area. Perhaps we are talking about indirect financing, which would probably be illegal,” a German lawyer specializing in international sanctions commented on the situation in an interview with DW on condition of anonymity.

Thus, there is no need to talk about large-scale investments in security and the environment in the conditions that have developed after the annexation. Moreover, ten years before the annexation, which Dmitry Firtash controls Crimean Titan, the issue of environmental safety of production was not resolved even without sanctions.

See also:

After passing through passport control at the Dityatki checkpoint, the first stop along the route in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone is the village of Zalesye. The garden trees have grown into a real forest. Even the central streets are overgrown. Before the Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, about 3 thousand residents lived here. They were evacuated to the Borodyansky district of the Kyiv region. Over time, several people returned to the village without permission.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

House of Culture in Zalesye

Located 15 minutes from Chernobyl, Zalesye was a fairly large village: with high school, a library, a maternity hospital and a House of Culture built back in 1959. Its premises, by the way, have been well preserved - the hall is still decorated with a banner from the times of the USSR, in good condition, and stucco moldings framing the stage. But the floor is almost completely rotten, so you need to move with caution.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Equipment of liquidators in Chernobyl

Next stop - Chernobyl. Near the fire station, right in the open air, there is a museum of equipment involved in eliminating the consequences of the accident. In the early days, liquidators hoped to use it to clear particularly dangerous rubble. But even the technology couldn’t stand it high level radiation.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Memory Alley of the memorial complex "Star of Wormwood"

The Memory Alley of the Wormwood Star memorial complex in Chernobyl is a symbolic cemetery with the names of 162 settlements that were razed to the ground after the Chernobyl disaster. As Valery Starodumov, the liquidator of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, recalls, “the burial method was called “self-made.” An engineering barrier vehicle (IMR) dug a trench, pushed a house into it and covered it with earth.”



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Microsievert? Ber? Micro X-ray? Curie?

The next stop is the village of Kopachi, located in a 10-kilometer zone. Its territory was heavily contaminated with radionuclides. Tourists measure radiation levels using dosimeters, which can be obtained for additional fee(5-10 euros). Accompanying people should help you navigate the units of measurement. In some places there is a “phonic noise” and “off scale”, the device beeps loudly.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

The village of Kopachi is located just 4 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Due to severe contamination, it was liquidated and covered with earth. One of the few buildings left standing on the surface is kindergarten. To this day, toys, children's furniture, preschool education manuals, and a parent's corner have been preserved intact. But there are no children.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

The area in front of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

A monument to the liquidators of the accident was erected on the site in front of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Today this power unit is covered with a new protective confinement (security arch) and looks quite peaceful. And in April 1986, after the accident, radiation levels here exceeded the norm by thousands of times. About 600,000 people took part in eliminating the consequences of one of the largest man-made disasters.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Radiological control at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

Before entering the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, you must undergo control of radiological contamination of clothing. Instrument readings are usually quite accurate. If they exceed the norm, they try to clean the clothes. If this fails, she will have to be abandoned. According to tour organizers, during a day of stay in the Chernobyl zone, the level of radiation exposure does not exceed the dose received during an hour of flight on an airplane.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

After passing radiological control, in the Chernobyl NPP canteen they offer a full lunch: borscht or soup, meat with a side dish and salad, compote, juice and bread. Vegetarians can also eat here: instead of meat, you can take, for example, watermelon and peach. All products were brought to the exclusion zone with " big land"The price of lunch is 100 hryvnia (a little more than three euros). Coffee can be taken separately from the machine.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

"White House" in Pripyat

The city of Pripyat is the pride of socialist urban planning. Year of foundation - 1970. Before the accident, about 50,000 inhabitants lived in Pripyat, located two kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The photo shows the “white house” where the city elite and the director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Viktor Bryukhanov, who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison, lived. On the ground floor is the Rainbow store, which served as a furniture warehouse after the accident.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

These machines, installed near the Pripyat cafe, were an integral part of the urban landscape in Soviet times. They stood on the streets and in recreation parks. This model AT-101SK was produced production association"Kievtorgmash". Soda with syrup cost three kopecks, without syrup - one kopeck. In the machine on the right (in the photo) a cut glass remained standing.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Unique stained glass window in the Pripyat cafe

Cafe "Pripyat" in the 70-80s was a favorite vacation spot for young people. It was located at the river station, where the Raketa motor ships from Kyiv arrived. A special feature of the interior is a stained glass window, most likely by the team of the famous muralist Ivan Litovchenko. Made using labor-intensive and expensive technology: the design is assembled from fragments of colored glass.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Pripyat was considered an exemplary elite city. The level of supply for power engineers was compared with that in Moscow; the shortages familiar to the USSR were rare here. There were 25 stores in Pripyat, including a department store that opened in early 1986. There was a grocery department on the first floor, and a furniture department on the second. There are still refrigerated display cases here, although looters long ago sold all the “stuffing” for scrap metal.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Loot of Marauders

Traces of looters are most noticeable in the abandoned houses of Pripyat residents. Residents of the city were subsequently able to pick up and remove some items that were not contaminated by radiation; some of the property was disposed of. The rest became the prey of looters. They even removed the batteries. Now most of the apartments are completely empty, but in some places you can still find old furniture and the remains of kitchen utensils.



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Secret object - radar station "Duga"

She is also “Chernobyl-2”, she is also “Russian woodpecker”, she is also “brain blower”. The last stop on the route is a secret facility built near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It was part of the USSR's air defense system to detect the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Since 1976, “Duga” has been spoiling the nerves of radio amateurs with constant noise on the air, for which it was dubbed the “woodpecker.”



One day in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Meet Semyon the fox

In the vicinity of Pripyat you can often meet a fox named Semyon. He became something of a local celebrity. Semyon loves tourists, because they often feed him. But it is not recommended to iron it. And not only because there could theoretically be radioactive particles on his fur. This handsome guy is a wild animal, and despite frequent meetings with people, he has not forgotten how to bite.

Today, former assistant to First Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea Mikhail Sheremet, Vladimir Garnachuk, published a video of the area around the plant, shot with a quadcopter. It shows not only the acid reservoir, whose fumes, according to the authorities, turned the life of neighboring Armyansk into a post-apocalypse, but also huge areas of white matter. Apparently this is phosphogypsum waste.

The acid storage tank itself turned out to be not some kind of industrial tank, but a lake with an area of ​​1 square meter. km. Nearby are kilometers of fields with buildings destroyed as if after a bombing, and the plant itself with red and white patina on the roofs.

In the back right corner is an acid accumulator, a white field is presumably phosphogypsum waste

Sivash comes close to all this. If the Red Army soldiers stormed it today, they would probably dissolve in the poisonous green and orange waters, like sugar in tea. But today in these places everything is different: the border with Ukraine runs right through the acid reservoir. It goes around the Crimean Titan like a wedge, leaving the plant owned by the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash in Russia.

[]Immediately beyond the border line, the villages of the Kherson region are visible - Pervokonstantinovka, and 12 more. Many are much closer to the acid lake than Armyansk.

Meanwhile, children are being evacuated from Armyansk. The Crimean authorities have finally recognized the seriousness of the situation. True, it looks somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, officials continue to assure that living in the city is safe. On the other hand, Prime Minister Sergei Aksenov admitted that it will take 7 months to eliminate the cause of the emissions (at first they said it was hydrogen chloride, now it is sulfur dioxide). This is the best case scenario. Because the acid lake is steaming due to a lack of fresh water, which is supposed to be used to dilute the acid. And they haven’t diluted it in the required volumes for four years – ever since Ukraine blocked the North Crimean Canal.

As “Notes” have repeatedly written before, the canal fed underground aquifers, from which Armyansk and the city-forming enterprise “Crimean Titan” were supplied with water through wells. After the canal was turned off, water sources began to gradually deplete and become salty.

The first alarming reports about this appeared back in 2016. However, Crimean Titan still required a lot of fresh water to maintain its production cycle - and it continued to pump it from wells. According to the latest data, drilling is already underway at depths of 400 meters.

[]For Armyansk, the depletion of subsoil is fraught with complete cessation centralized water supply and switching to imported water. But if the plant stops, there will be no work in the city and thousands of residents will have to be resettled in any case. But where? There is no money, no space, no jobs for them in Crimea.

The events of the last week have shown that in addition to dehydration, the city is facing another problem. The management of the Crimean Titan plant is accustomed not to advertise the risks of its daily activities. For the time being, it was not spread that the lack of water is fraught with emissions from the acid storage tank.

As Crimean Titan employees told Notes, due to a shortage of water from wells at the plant, used water is purified and used in a second round, and then poured into an acid storage tank. But this water and this purification are not enough to dilute the acid in the lake. As a result, at night, when the temperature changed over the brown lake, an acrid fog began to form, settling on all surfaces.

The map shows that the distance from the acid storage tank to the city is 27 km. Within this radius are the Russian villages of Perekop and Suvorovo, and several Ukrainian ones.

If we draw a circle around the plant with a radius of 27 km, it will include the Ukrainian villages of Chervony Chaban, Stavki, Aleksandrovka, Gavrilovka, Makarovka, Mirnoye, Polevoe, Pervokonstantinovka, Grigorovka, Pavlovka, Stroganovka, Ivanovka. Depending on the direction of the wind, emissions from the Crimean Titan can reach the regional center - Chaplinka.

The small circle in the center is an acid storage tank near the walls of the plant with an area of ​​1 sq. km. Large circle - possible spread of the release along a ring with a radius of 27 km. This is the distance from the acid lake to Armyansk

If you look at the satellite map, you can see that around the plant on both sides of the border there are endless fields and farms. The emissions have already destroyed the greenery in the Armyansk area. Residents of the Kherson region also complain about rust and respiratory problems.

The vast areas around the Crimean Titan can be saved by diluting the acid in the storage tank with water. But today, at a meeting with residents of Armyansk, Sergei Aksenov admitted: in the four years since the canal was blocked, the acid reservoir has lost 30 million cubic meters of water. There is not such a quantity not only in the north of Crimea - there are no free volumes on the entire peninsula.

Now, according to Aksenov, experts are assessing how the storage device will behave if the acid is diluted with salty sea water from the neighboring Karkinitsky Bay. But even if the chemical reaction is not aggressive, it will take, let us remind you, at least seven months to fill the lake. After all, first you need to lay pipes to the storage tank from the bay, and then wait until it is filled. The rate is approximately 60 thousand cubic meters of water per day.

Aksnov says that the acid lake is “bare” for the first time in 20-25 years. But, judging by the publications of the Ukrainian media 5-7 years ago, harmful emissions in Armyansk have long become commonplace.

In 2011, the publication perekop.ru reported that the area of ​​acid and sludge storage facilities at the Crimean Titan reaches 42 square meters. km, but this is not enough for Firtash’s plant. There is also an acute problem with the disposal of phosphogypsum, one of the toxic wastes of chemical production.

According to the Perekop resource for 2012, Crimean Titan contains five waste disposal sites (WDU), including an acid storage facility in the northwestern part of Sivash. According to the accepted classification, all of them are assigned the highest category of environmental hazard - “G”, i.e. "extremely dangerous storage facility."

In the same year, Krasnoperekopsk.net wrote that on the territory of the main industrial site of Crimean Titan there are 290 stationary sources of pollutant emissions. In Armyansk, according to the publication, even then there was an excess of maximum one-time maximum permissible concentrations (MPC) for dust up to 1.6 MAC, for hydrogen fluoride up to 2.9 MAC, for ammonia - 1.6 MAC. A similar picture was observed in neighboring Krasnoperekopsk.

In the spring of 2012, the Department of Statistics in Crimea