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В 2014 году ЕВРАЗ впервые обнародовал информацию об объемах годовых выбросов парниковых газов в рамках международного проекта по добровольной углеродной отчетности CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project). «Собранная для отчета информация дает нам возможность оценить итоги деятельности Компании в области экологической и энергетической эффективности и наметить следующие шаги, – отметил Вице-президент ЕВРАЗа по охране труда, промышленной безопасности и экологии Майкл Шубл. – Устойчивое развитие – один из приоритетов ЕВРАЗа; мы будем продолжать работу над повышением экологической безопасности своих активов и регулярно информировать общественность о своих результатах».

Понимая стратегическую важность повышения экологической ответственности бизнеса для будущего Компании, ЕВРАЗ изучает лучшие мировые практики, постоянно модернизирует оборудование и совершенствует технологии. Так, проект по реконструкции доменных печей на ЕВРАЗ НТМК с ресурсосберегающими технологиями выплавки чугуна позволил сократить выбросы парниковых газов в атмосферу на 1,88 млн тонн за счет снижения расхода кокса. Также Компания уделяет пристальное внимание ежегодным программам энергосбережения и капитального ремонта энергооборудования, которые ведут к сокращению энергетических выбросов.

Text 10. IN DEBT OF NATURE

In all times the mining and metallurgical production affected nature. Quarries spoiling the landscape, smoke and slag from numerous blast and open-hearth furnaces poisoning water - all these inevitably accompanied the growth of metal production. The only thing had for a long time saved nature and population of negative effects of industrial pollution was relatively small amount of metal output. Thus, the old Nizhny Tagil works produced approximately 14 mn tons of iron over 262 years, this is equal to 3-4-year production program of a modern blast furnace shop of NTMK. The difference is about 80 times - in dust, smoke, slag, steam, waste water and another unhealthy elements.

And this regards the blast furnace shop only! Near blast furnaces the largest coke-chemical production entirely unknown in the 18th-19th centuries is located at NTMK. The two large open-hearth and converter shops of NTMK polluted atmosphere with almost the whole Mendeleyev table. The works’ rolling shops also greatly contributed to the breakage of ecological balance. To add to all this unhealthy smoke and slime-collectors of mining enterprises and agglomeration factories and the picture of a hand-made catastrophe is now described.

For the town’s residents the situation was exaggerated by irrational location of the works and residential sector. On the turn of the 1920s -1930s different departments built mining, coke- chemical, metallurgical and machine-building works, as a rule without agreements in mutual relations and without a slightest consideration of living conditions of citizens in new residential built blocks.

It must be noted that in the following decades the metallurgists made attempts to reduce unhealthy influence of the production on the environment. Сleaning constructions of different types were built and introduced, many of them operated quite successfully. Since 1974 the problems of protections of the environments were included in all the long-term perspective programs of the works’ growth. Ministry of iron and steel metallurgy granted means for this purpose.

In 1980 a department of nature protection was established at the Ministry after which nature protection subdivisions were established at metallurgical enterprises. At NTMK the laboratory of protection of the environments emerged in 1986.

Whatever the programs be, nothing can be done without modern technologies and equipment for cleaning and utilization of the wastes of mining and metallurgical productions. In the USSR there was either lack of such equipment or its amount was too scant. During the 1970s-1980s NTMK administration for many times made orders for electric filters for renewal of cleaning constructions of open-hearth shop № 1, however, they were fruitless. Only in 1991 two filters were delivered by a direct barter form the works-producer. Moreover, these Soviet filters were of quite a doubtful quality. They were installed during the construction of the oxygen-converter shop for the first time in the USSR but they did not clean smoke and gas. Wet gas-cleaning with large-size and power consuming systems of wastes accumulating in water, removing and processing of slime.

And the most important thing is that the shops and production built and introduced at the works in the 1940s-1960s were ecologically dangerous despite any filters due to the technologies applied there. It was practically impossible to hold and clean all the gas, slag, slime, waste oil and other wastes of the metallurgical production.

In the 1990s payments from the works’ treasury into different ecological funds turned from almost symbolic sum to hard taxation for the enterprise. Thus for the first time in the story of the growth of Tagil metallurgy the situation had shaped when economic interests and ecological tasks were not only contradictory but were closely related. Reduction of the tension to the environments became economically profitable affair. In 1993 the management for protection of the environments was established at NTMK.

In early 1990s the ecological situation in Nizhny Tagil developed in entire correspondence with the Russian proverb: “There won’t be fortune but misfortune helped”. Disintegration of the economic ties, sharp decrease in defense orders entailed reduction of the output amount affected the works’ income but made to reject the most “dirty” technologies and stop the outdated machines. The direct worry of the citizens about worsening of the ecological situation in Nizhny Tagil also compelled metallurgists to that.

In 1989-1990 mass ecological meetings and demonstration claiming for immediate stoppage, closing and liquidation of all the unhealthy productions in the town took place.

First and foremost utilization of oxygen in the open-hearth smelting was reduced at NTMK. In 1988-1989 utilization of oxygen was reduced in open-hearth shop’s № 2 furnaces, in 1991 in the furnaces of the shop № 1 too. On April 16th, 1993 a vitally important for all Tagil citizens event took place - the works’ veteran, open-hearth shop № 2 was stopped. During the same year steel-makers blew out one more open-hearth furnace in the first shop, four coke furnaces were stopped in the coke-chemical production. Parallel with this the efficiency of the cleaning devices in the steel-making shops was increased. Later on, in January 1997 three more open-hearth furnaces and “1500” blooming mill were stopped.

In 1993 institute “Tagilmetallurgproject” started designing a large-scale slag-processing complex using the technological equipment of the German firm “Erich Friedrich”. On September 27th, 1996 the shop of processing technogene substances was put into exploitation. The new NTMK subdivision had to clean more than 50 mn tons of slag dumps accumulated occupying the area of 175 hectares. The shop’s project capacity allows to process 3.1 mn tons slag a year obtaining thus 2.7 mn tons of metal pebble and sand, 310 thousand tons of different metal articles and 50 thousand tons of refractory scrap. According to the calculations approximately in the 2020s the NTMK shop of technogene substances will complete cleaning of the town’s north-western outskirts.

The works’ current industrial amounted by 2001 to about 2.7 mn tons a year, among them 2 mn tons of iron-containing materials. The major part of them, about 70 percent, was utilized directly at the works or at the factories of Vysokogorsky mining and concentrating works and Goroblagodatsky ore mine.

A very perspective technology designed already in the Soviet time was introduced in 1995-1996 at Vysokogorsky mining and concentrating works. The so-called “tails” left after magnet separation of iron concentrate were additionally processed for the purpose to obtain copper concentrate. The chief condition was strict correspondence of the technology’s parameters to the requirements of ecological security. The wastes containing 25-0.35 percent of copper were converted into already 25 percent concentrate. By 2001 already 32 thousand tons of copper concentrate were produced at Vysokogorsky mining and concentrating works that was equal to processing of almost half a million tons of ore.

The reconstruction of the 1990s due to its incompleteness has not solved all the ecological problems of Tagil metallurgy. Nevertheless, within these years far more measures were taken than over several previous decades. Over the last decade of the 20th century four out of ten coke batteries, a blast furnace, 12 open-hearth furnaces, two rolling mills were stopped at NTMK. Vysokogorsky mining and concentrating works’ agglomeration factory was also closed down. The amount of air pollution decreased more than twice and was only 114 thousand tons in 2001. The basic directions of the further perfection of Nizhny Tagil ecology remain the persistent technical re-equipment of NTMK and construction of new modern metallurgical machinery.