In November last year, residents of Russia learned that a huge soil failure was discovered in Solikamsk, Perm Territory . It was not a joke or a practical joke - a giant funnel of an almost perfect circle gaped in the photos from the scene in the ground.
Solikamsk can be called the salt capital of Russia. Here are: the oldest salt mine, a museum and a salt monument. Now a new attraction has appeared here - the Solikamsk failure.
Chronicle of events
On November 18, 2014, an accident occurred at Solikamsk-2 mine - groundwater began to flow. Some of the pumps were flooded with brine (a mixture of salts and water), and at 13:50 Moscow time a decision was made to introduce a submarine (emergency response plan). 120 mine employees were immediately brought to the surface. Explosive hydrogen sulfide was supplied to the mine along with brine, so the power was turned off.
Three and a half kilometers from residential buildings in Solikamsk, on the site of the old unexploited mine of the company, on the same day a failure was discovered, the size of which at that time was 20 by 30 meters.
Event Location
The Solikamsk-2 Mining Administration is a potassium chloride factory and, in fact, the mine itself . The mine is part of Uralkali. Its owners are Mikhail Prokhorov and Uralchem, headed by Dmitry Mazepin. Part of the shares is owned by a Chinese company.
Uralkali is one of the leading companies in the production of potash fertilizers, supplying the market with about 20% of their global volume. The accident that stopped the Solikamsk-2 mine led to the collapse of the company's shares.
The village near Solikamsk, where a failure was formed that stopped the work of the Solikamsk-2 mine, is called Klyuchiki. It is located above the abandoned mine workings, a few kilometers from the city limits and residential buildings.
Reasons for what happened
Now experts are working to find out what caused the Solikamsk failure: a person or natural factors? If we talk about past similar incidents, then partly they occurred due to a violation of technology. Potash mines have an average life of about 50-60 years, and over time they all become flooded groundwater. Only here the negative consequences of this can still be minimized. Those voids that are formed in the process of mining potash ore must be laid waste rock.
A non-uniform layer of rock is located above the potash mines: a layer of rock salts goes above the potash salt layer, and even higher - over 100 meters of rock saturated with groundwater. The latter gradually make their way into the voids formed during the development of potash ore. An earthquake can spur this process. This happened, for example, in 1995, when tremors with a force of 4 points led to the appearance of cracks in the rock, a break in the brine and a failure. According to them, the earthquake was the cause of the November accident at the Solikamsk-2 mine.
By a lucky coincidence, the Solikamsk failure did not occur in a populated area, otherwise the victims could not have been avoided. The holiday village Klyuchiki has long been abandoned. After the 1995 earthquake, water supply was disrupted here, and gradually the buildings and cottages were abandoned. But the residents of Solikamsk fear that their city may suffer the fate of Bereznikov, where soil failures began to occur in the city. So far, it has been decided to install sensors in residential buildings located in the immediate vicinity of the company's second mine, transmitting information online.
Future forecasts
According to experts and engineers, the Solikamsk failure will increase. In December 2014, it increased in its upper part due to the natural subsidence of the soil. Now the Solikamsk failure, the depth of which has not yet been determined exactly, has increased again. According to the latest data, its size is 50 by 80 meters. During this time, he became three times larger. If the inflow of brine into the mine continued in the same volume, it was highly probable that the failure near Solikamsk would increase further if urgent measures were not taken to eliminate the consequences of the November accident. In December, it became clear that water flows into the mine several times less. And if the company at the beginning of the events believed that the mine was practically lost, now experts say with more confidence that it can still be saved. Since the beginning of December, the mine began to produce rock for laying it in the void.
All repeats
The Solikamsk failure is far from the first in the history of Uralkali. Similar events occurred in 1986 and 1995.
In 2006, the BKRU-1 mine was flooded, located near the city of Berezniki, and a year later a failure formed in its place, which increased with time. Over the next years, several more failures appeared that began to threaten residential buildings. As a result, Uralkali was forced to take on part of the funding to relocate residents from the danger zone and lay bypass the railway.
The response to the Solikamsk failure on the Internet: photojacks
The online community has responded to the incident near Solikamsk with a kind of humor.
Failure has become a popular photo-toad. Some of the “masterpieces” turned out pretty funny, despite the seriousness of what happened.