OREANDA-NEWS. November 26, 2007. In accordance with Action Plan aimed at dismantling the hazardous facilities of its First Mine Division (BKRU-1), Uralkali (Berezniki, Perm Territory) has completed the decommissioning of Shaft 2 and begun the final stage of the decommissioning of Shaft 1,  the company's press service reported.

The shaft decommissioning of the flooded mine will allow the company to prevent them from being washed out by groundwater and is necessary to ensure that the situation in the accident area will develop in a safe way. The decommissioning was designed by "Galurgia" Institute and agreed upon by the Federal Service for Supervision of Environment, Technology and Nuclear Management of the Russian Federation. The first step is to dismantle the machinery and structures inside the mineshafts. The shaft siding is filled with salt waste; the lower and upper shaft sections, with special material resistant to salt-loaded groundwater; and the middle section (carnallite), with clay preventing the penetration of water into the carnallite layer.

As planned, the preliminary work (dismantling of shaft equipment) is being done in Shaft 3. Shafts 3 and 4 will be the last to be decommissioned, as they are important for mine ventilation: they contain pipelines that discharge gases resulting from salt dissolution and ventilate the remaining un-flooded mine sections.

Uralkali's shaft decommissioning costs are assessed at 40 million rubles. The total costs incurred by the company since the accident to eliminate its consequences have exceeded 500 million rubles. This amount includes expenses related to organizing and supporting the full-fledged monitoring system, monitoring investigations for the mine field, and seismic operations (about 40 million rubles). Uralkali has also incurred costs of over 50-million rubles for the dismantling and decommissioning of the BKRU-1 facilities (that could be hazardous if any subsidence occurs). Over 90 million rubles have been spent for setting up the production of brines put into the mine to reduce rock dissolution. Finally, the company spends 20–25 million rubles every month on the preparation and injection of brines (a total of 240 million rubles for these purposes since the accident). Uralkali also undertook paying more than 70 million rubles for the construction of a dam separating the navigation canal from the subsidence site. The dam construction, required by the Government Commission, will prevent the River Kama's water from going into the mine and reduce the water inflow into the mine by 300 cubic meters per hour.

Sergey Diakov, Deputy General Director, Uralkali, said: "Our goal is to minimize the mine flooding consequences and ensure that the mine-related situation will develop in a predictable way. We have done and will do all that we can to make the effects of the accident on the life in Berezniki as limited as possible. And Uralkali goes beyond the performance of strictly technical functions, implementing the measures recommended by the Government Commission. We consider it important that the people who found themselves in a difficult situation will suffer the lowest possible losses. That's why the company is going to allocate 300 million rubles for the construction of social infrastructure facilities in the new housing estate that is meant to accommodate people from the hazard area located above the carnallite mining operations."