Russia

The Urals deposits

Platinum group metals production in Russia has a history stretching back to the early nineteenth century. Large alluvial platinum deposits were discovered in the Ural Mountains in 1823, and have been exploited continuously up to the present. Once far richer than any known underground sources, these deposits have long since been stripped of the highest grade ore and now account for under one per cent of Russian platinum production.

The Noril'sk-Talnakh mines

Production from the Urals placers probably started to decline from the 1920s. But in 1935, exploitation began of pgm-containing copper-nickel deposits on the Taimyr Peninsula in northern Siberia; these remain the most important of Russia's known pgm reserves. The first to be discovered and exploited was the Norilsk deposit; this lies just south of the town of that name which grew up to serve the mining operations. Mining was initially via adit operations, but in the 1940s, two open pits were developed; the smaller, Ugol Creek, was closed in the late 1960s, but the Medvezhy pit is still being mined. By the early 1950s the Zapolyarny underground mine was also exploiting the deposit.

In 1960, high grade copper-nickel deposits were discovered at Talnakh, 27 kilometres north of Norilsk. Four mines were developed between the 1960s and 1980s, all of which are still in operation. The first, and shallowest at a maximum depth of around 400 metres, was the Mayak mine; production here started in 1965. It was followed by the Komsomolsky mine in around 1970, and the Oktyabrsky mine about five years later. The last named is the largest of the Talnakh operations, mining at a depth of around 1,100 metres, and accessing the richest ores. The Taimyrsky mine entered production during the 1980s and is worked to depths of around 1,500 metres.

Processing and output levels

Concentrating, smelting and base metal refining are carried out in facilities at the Norilsk-Talnakh complex. A proportion of the high grade nickel ore is sent directly to the Norilsk Nickel Combine (NNC) smelter on the Kola Peninsula. Pgm slimes are recovered from the electrolytic refining of nickel and copper and are sent outside NNC to specialist precious metals refineries for the production of pgm.

Peak production at the Norilsk-Talnakh mines was reached in the late 1980s, at around 4 million oz of palladium and 1 million oz of platinum annually. The decline and fall of the Soviet Union led to a period of falling output, with reductions in essential investment biting deep into productive capability. However, since the late 1990s, Norilsk Nickel has succeeded in reversing this decline, and in 2005 the company reported production of 751,000 oz of platinum and 3.133 million oz of palladium.

The company plans to increase ore throughput by over 20 per cent to 26 million tonnes annually by 2015. Part of this increase will come from the development of the new Skalisty mine, which will give access to new reserves of “rich” (massive sulphide) ore. At the existing mines, where massive sulphide ore reserves have largely been worked out, there will be increased production of disseminated and copper-rich ores. However, Norilsk Nickel does not expect any increase in output of platinum group metals, probably because the ore bodies that will be exploited in future will be lower in grade.

Other sources

Small amounts of pgm are produced from nickel-copper ores mined on the Kola Peninsula. Over the past ten years significant quantities of platinum have been produced from two alluvial deposits in the far east region of Russia. The first is the Kondyor mine in Khabarovsk region and the second, which started production in 1994, is the Koryak mine in Kamchatka. Together these two operations produced 185,000 oz of platinum in 2005.

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