Evenki hydroelectric station

The design capacity of hydroelectric power stations is from 8 thousand to 12 thousand MW, the average annual output is 46 billion kWh . It is possible to increase the capacity of hydroelectric power plants up to 20 thousand MW with the same generation in order to use the hydroelectric power station reservoir as a state energy reserve. In the building of the hydroelectric station, 8-12 (20) radial-axial hydraulic units with a capacity of 1000 MW each, operating at a maximum pressure of 184 meters, should be installed. The dam of the hydroelectric power station is to create the Evenki (Turukhansk) reservoir with an area of ​​9400 km², a total volume of 409.4 km³ and a useful volume of 101.0 km³ , a length of about 1200 km . At the same time, it will be necessary to relocate 8,000 people , including 5,500 people from the village of Tura (administrative center of Evenkia) that falls into the flood zone. The volume of logging on the reservoir bed is estimated at 4.7 million m³ .

The type of hydroelectric dam is not completely determined. Two options are considered: with gravity concrete and with bulk dams. The height of the dam should be about two hundred meters.

Below the dam of the Evenki hydroelectric station, it is planned to build a counter-regulating hydroelectric station of significantly lower capacity, the main task of which is to equalize the uneven discharge of the main hydroelectric station. The capacity of the counter-regulatory hydroelectric power station is 790 MW, the average annual output is 3.8 billion kWh.

The hydroelectric power of the hydroelectric power station should be transferred to the Tyumen region and further to the European part of Russia via two DC transmission lines with a voltage of 1,500 kV and a length of 3,500 km , which have no analogues in Russia. Also, these power lines will make it possible to combine the isolated Norilsk region with the integrated power system, which will allow us to start implementing other hydropower projects. A hydropower plant should be of strategic importance and regulate the peak loads of the entire energy system in the center of Russia. With a huge supply of water, the Evenki hydroelectric station can easily compensate for even a significant jump in energy consumption, associated, for example, with a significant cooling. Also of interest is the idea of ​​using the Evenki hydroelectric station to work in conjunction with the large Mezen tidal power station to smooth out the uneven production of the latter.

The total cost of construction (including power lines) is estimated at 11.9 billion dollars. Financing of design and survey works on the hydroelectric power station was included in the HydroOGK investment program for 2007 .

The Evenki hydroelectric station was designed by the Lenhydroproject Institute.

According to the statement of the project’s chief engineer, Vladimir Lvovsky, the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric station, taking into account the preparatory period, will take at least eighteen years. Phased commissioning of power lines from the Evenki hydroelectric station, primarily to the Tyumen region and the Urals , should begin with the seventh year of construction ^[2] .

The construction of the hydroelectric station is planned to be carried out on a rotational basis with the delivery of goods along the Yenisei . It is possible that the construction of a hydroelectric station will serve as an incentive for the resumption of the construction of the Circumpolar Railway, which was discontinued in the early 1950s ^[3] .

According to the plan, at the first stage, the completion of the Nizhne-Kureyskaya hydroelectric station with a capacity of 180 MW is carried out, which should provide power supply to the construction site.

Plans for the construction of the Nizhne-Tunguska Hydroelectric Power Station, including 180 large new hydroelectric power plants, were announced by N. S. Khrushchev on October 18, 1961 in the report on the Third Program of the CPSU at the XXII Congress of the CPSU ^[4] .

Preparatory work on the construction of the Turukhansk hydroelectric station began in the late 1980s , but by the beginning of the 1990s they were stopped both due to protests by environmentalists, who enjoyed great public support at that time, and because of the deterioration of the country's economic condition, accompanied by drop in power consumption. In the 1990s, various types of hydropower plants were considered, differing in pressure and, accordingly, in power and generation - for example, there is a variant of hydroelectric power with a capacity of 6300 MW and generation of 29 billion kWh with a pressure of one hundred and forty meters, a variant with a capacity of 14 thousand MW and others . In 2005, the topic of the construction of the Turukhansk hydroelectric station (renamed Evenki by this time) was again raised by the heads of RAO UES of Russia A. B. Chubais and JSC HydroOGK V. Sinyugin. It is planned that the electricity of the hydroelectric power station will be transferred to the European part of Russia to cover the deficit of the energy system. The Evenki HPP project is supported by the administration of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Chronicle

• Financing of design and survey works on hydroelectric power stations is included in the HydroOGK investment program for 2007 . In 2006 - 2007, HydroOGK conducted a survey of the territory of the hydroelectric complex;
• In February 2007, the head of HydroOGK announced that a decision on the possibility of implementing the Evenki hydroelectric station project would be made at the end of 2007;
• In April 2007, it was announced that the construction of a hydroelectric power station with a capacity of 8,000 MW was included in the General Scheme for the deployment of electric power facilities until 2020 ;
• On April 26, 2007, CJSC Boguchanskaya HPP (a subsidiary of JSC HydroOGK) announced a tender for the following items: substantiation of investments in the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric complex; engineering surveys for the stage of substantiation of investments in the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric complex;
• On July 19, 2007, the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory V. Khloponin discussed with the Russian President V. Putin a project for the construction of a hydroelectric station, the project received approval from the president;
• On August 23-24, 2007, a meeting was held in Turukhansky district under the leadership of A. B. Chubais, which resulted in a decision to prepare a package of documents to the Government of Russia for making a final decision on the construction of a hydroelectric power station. It is planned that if a decision is made on the construction of a hydroelectric power station, it can begin in 2010 .
• In December 2007, it was announced that the Lenydroproject and Canadian company SNC-Lavalin will be involved in the design of the Evenki hydroelectric station.
• On January 24, 2008, environmental public organizations appealed to the Security Council and the government of the Russian Federation with a request to curtail the implementation of the extremely dangerous project for the construction of the Evenki Hydroelectric Power Station ^[5] .
• On February 7, 2008, in a letter to the head of the Evenki municipal district, residents of the Tutonchany settlement protested against the construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Lower Tunguska River ^[6] .
• In March 2008, the General Scheme for the placement of electric power facilities by 2020 ^[7] , approved by the Government of the Russian Federation , was published, which included the Evenki hydroelectric station and its counter-regulator. According to this document, in 2016–2020 it is planned to commission 8,000 MW of capacity at the Evenki hydroelectric station and another 150 MW at the Nizhne-Kureyskaya hydroelectric station.
• In May 2008, Chairman of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Dobretsov said that the developers of the project had not yet contacted academics to conduct a comprehensive expert assessment of the Evenki HPP and expressed confidence that new additional studies were needed ^[8] .
• In June 2008, a public reception was opened in Krasnoyarsk on environmental impact assessment of the Evenki hydroelectric station.
• On July 18, 2008, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and a coalition of public environmental organizations sent an appeal to the government of the Russian Federation with a call to suspend the development of pre-project documentation for the Evenki HPP ^[9] . In the same month, public hearings were held in Evenki villages on the draft terms of reference for the preparation of the materials “Environmental Impact Assessment” (EIA) of the Evenki hydroelectric station ^[10] .
• On August 19, 2008, WWF (World Wide Fund for Wildlife Conservation) and a coalition of Russian non-governmental organizations appealed to the Canadian-based SNC-Lavalin, the developer of the Evenki HPP project, with a request to refuse to participate in the project [1] .
• On August 25-29, 2008, the heads of villages falling into a possible reservoir bed of the Evenki hydroelectric station visited the Sayano-Shushenskaya and Kureyskaya hydroelectric stations [2] .
• September 1, 2008 Krasnoyarsk public association “Dam. No! ”Sent an official letter [3] to public and private organizations related to the Evenki hydroelectric station construction project, with a list of comments on the environmental aspects of the proposed construction of a hydroelectric power station.
• September 11, 2008 “ Lenhydroproject ” in the official response to the letter “Dam. No! ”Acknowledged that the Evenki Dam project does not provide for the construction of fish passage facilities and shipping locks. The last paragraph added another argument to the arsenal of project critics who considered the creation of their own fleet in the reservoir absurd due to the transport conditions of Evenkia [4] .
• On September 24, 2008, a hearing was held at the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation on the topic “A Prospective Plan for the Development of Hydropower”. At the hearing, a map of the proposed reservoir of the Evenki hydroelectric station was developed, developed by WWF in conjunction with the non-profit partnership Transparent World. Based on the most detailed terrain data currently available, obtained from a topographic map on a scale of 1: 200,000, experts concluded that filling the reservoir at the location of the waterworks gauge at a distance of 59.5 km from the mouth of the Lower Tunguska River to the mark of the NPU 120 mbs impossible, since in this case there will be an overflow of water from the Lower Tunguska valley through the saddles in the upper reaches of its tributary - the Letnaya River - into the Sukhoi Tunguska river basin and further to the Yenisei [5] .
• September 26, 2008 Krasnoyarsk public association “Dam. No! ”In its press release [6] indicated that the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric station would violate the resolution of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which recommended that the Government of the Russian Federation abandon the project for the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric station because of the threats it poses to the traditional way of life of the indigenous peoples of Evenkia [7] .
• On October 2, 2008, the new Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Mikhail Kuzichev, immediately after being confirmed in his position, promised the deputies of the local Legislative Assembly: “I know the management of HydroOGK (RusHydro), and it will be easier for me to talk to them about the Evenki Hydroelectric Power Station. And we will either prove the effectiveness of the construction of hydroelectric power stations, or we will prove its inefficiency ” [8] .
• On October 4, 2008, during a visit to the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, the head of RusHydro company Vasily Zubakin said: “Rumors about the implementation of the Evenki HPP project are greatly exaggerated. So far we are only talking about the pre-design stage ” [9] .
• October 14, 2008 Krasnoyarsk public association “Dam. No! ”Sent a new official letter to the JSC“ Lenhydroproject HydroOGK ”, which, among others, raises questions about creating its own fleet at the reservoir at the Evenki Hydroelectric Power Station, as well as the impact of the alleged Evenki Sea on the cavities of underground nuclear explosions falling into its impact zone [10 ] .
• On October 16, 2008, in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, in an article entitled “Who can save what isn’t?”, Journalist Elena Artemova doubted the existence of Evenki culture : “Most of the arguments against the construction of a hydroelectric station on Nizhnyaya Tunguska are connected with fears about the disappearance of the Evenki’s traditional life. How can one protect from destruction that has not existed for a long time? ” [11] .
• On October 21, 2008, the inhabitants of Evenkia sent a letter to the President of the Russian Federation, the Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Chairman of the local Legislative Assembly, demanding to stop the construction project of the Evenki hydroelectric station. “Why was a remote area chosen for the creation of a giant hydroelectric power station, where for thousands of kilometers there are no real consumers of electricity? The price of this hydroelectric power station is flooding a huge territory, which is naturally important, and destroying the Evenki habitat, ”the letter says, which was signed by more than two thousand people, which makes up 14.4% of the population of Evenkia ^[11] .
• On October 23, 2008, in the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, in the article “Who whispered letters“ carbon copy ”?” Journalist Anna Ivanova accused ecologists and opponents of the Evenki hydroelectric station construction of misinformation, stressing that the construction of Russia's largest hydroelectric station with a capacity of 8-12 GW would satisfy the needs 6700 Evenks : “if the Evenki Hydroelectric Power Station is still to be built, the Evenki will only benefit from this, but certainly will not suffer” [12] .
• On October 29, 2008, in response to an appeal from the inhabitants of Evenkia to the President of the Russian Federation on the inadmissibility of the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric station, a special statement was made by the head of the Sibir division of RusHydro Alexander Toloshinov. According to him, the greatest benefits from the construction of the Evenki hydroelectric station will be received by local residents [13] .
• On November 1, 2008, the chief engineer for the reservoirs of the Lenhydroproject Vitaly Ivanov, commenting on a map prepared by environmentalists with the places of the alleged flooding of the Evenki hydroelectric station, admitted that an overflow scenario in one of the options is possible, and in order to prevent this, the designers plan to build, in addition to the main dam a series of dams on other rivers of Evenkia [14] .
• On November 4, 2008, the Department of State Policy and Regulation in the Sphere of Environmental Protection and Ecological Safety of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation officially announced that the comments of the public association “Plotina. No! ”Were taken into account when preparing the comments of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia on the draft terms of reference for the EIA of the Evenki HPP [15] .
• On November 5, 2008, the press service of JSC RusHydro announced that the company expects to receive preliminary results of the environmental and social impact assessment of the Evenki HPP project on the environment in the first half of 2009 [16] .
• On November 8, 2008, the chief engineer of the Evenki hydroelectric power station project, Vladimir Lvovsky, announced that the total duration of the construction of a new hydroelectric power station on the Lower Tunguska River would be at least eighteen years, including the preparatory period [17] .
• On November 11, 2008, WWF, the Association of Indigenous Minorities of the North and a coalition of environmental organizations began collecting signatures against the project to build the Evenki hydroelectric station on the Lower Tunguska River [18] .
• 2009 Beginning of the implementation procedure of the “Environmental Impact Assessment of the Evenki hydroelectric station on the river. Lower Tunguska. ” [19] .
• September 17, 2009 A public hearing of the Preliminary materials on the “Environmental Impact Assessment of the Evenki Hydroelectric Power Station on the river. Lower Tunguska »
• On September 18, 2009, in the center of the Evenki district, the village of Tura, a public hearing of the Preliminary materials on the "Environmental Impact Assessment of the Evenki hydroelectric station on the river. Lower Tunguska. ” Residents of Evenkia, attended by environmentalists from Greenpeace Russia and the Wildlife Conservation Center, sharply criticized the EIA materials for their incompleteness and unreliability. A written survey of participants in the meeting showed that 209 people were against the construction of the hydroelectric power station, 4 people and 8 people did not decide on the construction. The result of a heated five-hour discussion was a vote at which the majority of the remaining residents present (22 out of 39) hearings were declared invalid. On September 21, JSC RusHydro sent the head of the village of Tura, I.V. Mukto, the report of the hearings prepared by her https://web.archive.org/web/20090821221101/http://www.rushydro.ru/company/invest/investprojects/5595 .html , but Mukto refused to sign it. Following a meeting to discuss the EIA of the Evenki HPP on September 18, the Village Tours Council decided on the inadmissibility of construction.

Environmental considerations

The project of the Turukhansk hydroelectric station is criticized by various environmental organizations. According to them, the following adverse consequences of the construction of the hydroelectric station are likely:

• salinization of the reservoir and the lower reaches of the Yenisei as a result of the release of underground brines,
• radiation pollution as a result of depressurization of underground nuclear explosion cavities,
• processing of the shores of the reservoir and the activation of landslide processes,
• the danger of thawing permafrost and the descent of the reservoir,
• increased greenhouse effect due to decomposition of vegetation and soil cover flooded in the reservoir, deterioration of water quality in the reservoir and the Yenisei ^[12] ,
• adverse local climate changes,
• violation of the natural migration routes of reindeer and their mass death,
• loss of hunting grounds,
• deterioration of the living conditions of the indigenous population - Evenks , loss of their national identity,
• flooding of large volumes of forest - forested area of ​​806.3 thousand ha, timber stock 53 million m³,
• unpredictable effects on seismic processes

Counterarguments Against Criticism by Environmentalists

To the proponents of construction, some of the arguments of environmentalists seem to be unfounded, others are considered to be resolvable. In particular, the flooded forest is of poor quality and is located for the most part in places inaccessible for development and therefore has no industrial significance. The designed reservoir will be very cold, which will lead to an extremely slow decomposition of flooded vegetation and soils, which does not have a significant negative impact on water quality. The number of resettled population is very small for a project of this level (more than a million people are resettled in China when creating a comparable Three Gorges hydroelectric station), and the living conditions after resettlement should improve. Damage to fish stocks can be compensated by artificial breeding, in addition, the reservoir will have its own fishing value. The location of the reservoir in a sparsely populated area minimizes the adverse effects of microclimate changes. It should be noted that in similar conditions Ust-Khantayskaya , Kureyskaya , Vilyui and Kolyma hydroelectric stations are located with large reservoirs, the operation of which did not reveal large-scale environmental problems. The generation of large amounts of renewable energy by hydropower plants will prevent the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases and harmful substances into the atmosphere.

Discussion on the economic feasibility of the project

Critics of the project note that the Evenkia region is not favorable for a permanent life of people, the creation of industrial enterprises and infrastructure. In addition to a significant increase in the cost of capital costs for the construction of the power plant and power lines, this means that the energy of the hydroelectric power station should be transferred outside Evenkia, since there are no and will not be local consumers. However, the entire East Siberia is an energy-surplus region, therefore, energy must be transferred to the European part of the country. Russian power engineers have no experience in implementing such projects beyond the long-distance transfer of electricity. In addition, a significant part of the energy will be lost in the networks, which will reduce the economic efficiency of the project.

Proponents of the project believe that the location of a hydropower plant in a remote, uninhabited area is the right decision, since in this case the costs of relocating people from the flood zone and arranging the reservoir are minimized, making a significant contribution to the cost of the hydropower plant. The location of the station in the lower reaches of a large navigable river allows you to organize a reliable scheme for the delivery of goods for construction by river transport. The power supply of the construction site is supposed to be organized from the nearby Kureyskaya hydroelectric station . The project was initially focused on the transfer of electricity to the European part of the country for two DC power lines , the losses in which, compared with classical AC power lines, are significantly lower. There is experience in the design and construction of such power lines - in the 1980s, Ekibastuz-Tambov DC power line was designed and partially built for ultra-long-distance transmission of electricity (which, however, was not put into operation due to the collapse of the USSR). Abroad, there is also rich experience in the construction and operation of such power lines - with the help of them, in particular, electricity is transferred from the cascade of large La Grande hydroelectric power stations in Canada.

• Media coverage of the construction of the Turukhansk hydroelectric station
• The Turukhansk hydroelectric station project on the site of the Lenhydroproject Institute
• Criticism of the Turukhansk hydroelectric power station project in the Evenki Life newspaper
• Site of opponents of the construction of the Turukhansk hydroelectric station
• About the meeting on the construction of hydroelectric power stations in August 2007 in the Turukhansky district
• Lenta.ru: Construction of the century
• “Evenki hydroelectric power station. The Dream of Russian Hydropower ” , Information on the initial Soviet project on the RusHydro Blog
• ["Science and Life", 1989, No. 08, pp. 62-69, I. Gitelzon, Corr. USSR Academy of Sciences - Lessons from one examination]