Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station: the "ghost" of the Soviet Union in the Kemerovo region

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The construction of the Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station (HPP) on the Tom River near the village of Zelenogorsk began back in 1976. Unfortunately, the construction of the hydroelectric power station was stopped 13 years later (in 1989), one of the reasons for this decision was the unfavorable economic situation. At that time, the facility was approximately 50% complete. In 2020, the Russian authorities approved the project to complete the Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station; investments in completing the project are estimated at 45 billion rubles.

The most interesting thing is that initially the main purpose of building this hydroelectric power station (back in Soviet times) was to improve the quality of water in the Tom River, which systematically fell during the low-water period. The generating function was considered secondary at that time.



In addition to the economic problems that influenced the suspension of construction work, a significant role in making this decision was played by the difficult environmental situation in the Kemerovo Region, which at times grew into full-fledged protest movements that were supported by broad sections of the local population. The logical response from the USSR authorities was the order of the Council of Ministers to suspend the construction of the Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station. The document stated that the difficult sanitary and environmental situation in the Tom River basin was to blame.

At that time, the facility was about 50% complete. The fate of 1,5 people who were resettled from 14 liquidated settlements located in the potential flood zone seems especially sad today. Considering the fact that 35 years later the hydroelectric power station has not been completed, it becomes clear that depriving some people of their historical place of residence was absolutely senseless.

Already in the 2020st century, the media periodically reported on the need to complete the construction of the hydroelectric power station. Clearer prospects for this project appeared only in 20, when the Russian energy company RusHydro and the leadership of the Kemerovo Region signed an agreement on cooperation in this matter. This decision seems quite logical, because the cost of all activities related to the liquidation of already constructed structures and the reclamation of the construction site was estimated at XNUMX billion rubles.

The project to complete the construction of the Krapivinskaya HPP in 2021–2022 was handled by the Lenhydroproject Institute. Many technical parameters of the future hydroelectric complex were changed, which is not surprising, since the previous project had become seriously outdated over 50 years. Thus, the normal reservoir backwater level (NRL) was lowered by 2,5 meters, which made it possible to reduce the area of ​​flooded territories and reduce the scale of the necessary work in this direction. In addition, the use of new equipment made it possible to increase the capacity of the hydroelectric power plant from 300 to 345 MW. The State Duma Committee on Energy estimated the cost of all work on completing the HPP at 45 billion rubles.

It is also impossible to ignore the fact that RusHydro, which was interested in implementing this project in 2020, has not shown itself in any other way. In any case, no media reports on this topic could be found. However, another potential investor has emerged. Thus, the domestic company En+ announced in 2021 that it was considering the option of completing the Krapivinskaya HPP. Mikhail Khardikov, who was then the general director of EuroSibEnergo (part of En+), noted then that the hydroelectric complex itself had already been built, so the main work was to create and install the necessary energy equipment. It was reported that the company was ready to invest 20 billion rubles in the launch of the hydroelectric power plant in the Kemerovo region, and its capacity would be 345 MW.

At the very end of 2022, the Krapivinskaya HPP was included in the General Scheme for the placement of electric power facilities until 2035, and its launch was planned for 2026–2030.

In 2023, Sergey Tsivilev, who held the post of Governor of the Kemerovo Region at that time, emphasized the socio-economic significance of this project for the region. He specified that for the successful implementation of the project in the region, during the construction work, which could take about five years, it would be necessary to create 3,3 thousand jobs. The head of the region did not ignore the financial effect of the commissioning of the new power generating facility, stating that, according to preliminary estimates, annual revenues from the Krapivinskaya HPP to budgets at all levels should amount to about 3,8 billion rubles.

Already in the current calendar year, a draft General Scheme for the placement of electric power facilities until 2042 was published, which contains information that the launch of the hydroelectric units of the Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station may take place in 2031–2032.

Of course, on the one hand, the situation looks rather sad. According to the most optimistic forecasts, more than fifty years will pass between the start of construction and the commissioning of this hydroelectric power station. The most offensive thing is that a fairly serious amount of work has already been completed within the framework of the construction of this hydroelectric complex, but time dictates its own conditions. Numerous actions related to the actualization of the existing original project, which also cost a lot of money, and difficult times for our country from an economic point of view have turned the unfinished hydroelectric power station into a "ghost" of the Soviet Union, wandering through the corridors of the buildings in which the leadership of the Kemerovo region lives.

I would like to believe that everything will end well. The periodic interest of various investors in this project allows us to count on this. The federal authorities are not standing aside either, the Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station constantly appears in various documents that contain plans for the construction of electric power facilities in the Russian Federation. All this allows us to assume that in the foreseeable future there will be one less "ghost from the past" in our country.
54 comments
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  1. -8
    25 November 2024 22: 10
    ...falls during the low water period

    What?! In what period? For whom are you writing in local dialects?
    1. +5
      25 November 2024 22: 29
      Low water, a phase of the river's water regime, annually repeated in the same season, characterized by low water content and a long period of low water levels. Occurs as a result of a decrease in the river's water supply. The term "low water" comes from the Old Russian "mezhenina" - drought
      1. 0
        25 November 2024 23: 32
        Thank you.
        Well, the author should have explained this briefly in the article. Not everyone here is a hydrologist or philologist. Thanks again for the explanation.
        1. 0
          26 November 2024 08: 54
          And not all economists, political scientists, builders, teachers and janitors. Do I have to explain every word now? What prevents you from looking in the dictionary if you yourself missed something from the school geography course?
          1. -2
            26 November 2024 10: 39
            If you have to, you will have to explain every abstruse and specialized word if you want to be understood, or use words that everyone understands, or don’t write at all!
            No need to be smart and show off, that's all. Are you writing for the people or for geography experts? And why should I still have to crawl and look for all sorts of special terminology in a search article for ordinary people?
            Could you have written "water level during drought"?
            And they don't teach this in geography at school.
            1. +3
              26 November 2024 10: 55
              Personally, I write for educated people. If you don't understand, close the page and that's it. After which you draw certain conclusions about your education. That's how it works.
              1. 0
                26 November 2024 22: 38
                Are you writing for educated people in a highly specialized field of geography, and not for ordinary readers in a pro-war patriotic publication? Then yes.
                But, somehow I didn’t notice that “Reporter” is a scientific journal of the Russian Geographical Society!
                I have two higher educations in the humanities, not counting a couple of specialized courses, and sufficient experience in teaching some subjects in social science, history and culture. Not counting sports knowledge and sports medicine (I have been studying both in parallel since childhood). Do you think I am poorly educated and have a narrow outlook? Everyone should be like that, and maybe you too. Well, in technical subjects yes, but clearly not in school-level geography.
                And I am educated enough that I don't pretend to be a smartass and I'm not afraid to ask about things I don't know. Do you think I can't rattle off abstruse topics in my fields? I can wrap it up in such a way that even a relevant student won't understand anything.
                But if I tell and consider the topic, I do it in simple words in literary Russian, understandable even to the last uneducated person. (If necessary, I will turn it into a three-story one for understanding, or else I don’t give a damn. But I am for simplicity, beauty and purity of the native language. In the 90s, authorities taught me.) This is education and culture, in respect for your interlocutor, listener or reader, whom you do not even see and do not know. And apparently educated people did not teach you this. You write articles, but have not risen above the level of a teenager, you still use cheap “left-wing excuses”, like I am smart, and you “yourself” are uneducated!
                1. -1
                  27 November 2024 15: 41
                  You are looking for the culprit in the wrong place. The term "low water" is studied in the sixth grade, when they study the feeding regimes of rivers. So, solve your problem, and do not complain that others are doing something wrong.
  2. +4
    25 November 2024 22: 29
    If you broke up the USSR so that problems could be solved by market means, then knock on the door of the owners.

    I can even advise you to smash your forehead on the parquet. And make it stronger! They say it sometimes helps the serfs.....
    1. -1
      25 November 2024 22: 37
      Both the forehead and the asshole. Unfortunate.
    2. -6
      26 November 2024 00: 00
      The USSR was destroyed to rid Russia of parasites... without Ukrainians, Georgians, Balts and others it is even easier to breathe.
      1. +5
        26 November 2024 06: 22
        and the extinction of hundreds of thousands of the country's INDIGENOUS population almost ANNUALLY is clear evidence of this... they are probably simply suffocating with happiness

        Now who is stopping you from breathing??? Ingush, Tatars and Yakuts???
        1. -5
          26 November 2024 13: 49
          Ingush and Tatars prevent those who have come from the "new" regions from breathing. And I, as a resident and native of GREAT RUSSIA, am an Ingush, Tatar, Yakut, just like the other native representatives of GREAT RUSSIA.
          1. +1
            26 November 2024 23: 21
            the question was not who you are, because this mess from your head is of little interest to me...

            the question was the following: why, 30 years after the collapse of the USSR, did the Russian people begin to breathe so freely that they are RAPIDLY dying out and who is to blame for this???

            after all, there is private business all around, no Georgians are eating away, but in fact, in just the less than 2024 year, 400 Great Russians have died out... and so it has been for most years, starting from 000. Somewhere more, somewhere less...

            all your recipes came together in one, but the profit for some reason is sharply negative... apparently, the spiritual Russian physics is lacking... well, never mind, now Dugin will rewrite Newton's laws in the Russian style...
            1. -1
              28 November 2024 20: 53
              Great Russians are by the way also Buryats and Chukchi... Have you tried having more children or is the state underpaying? At the beginning of the last century people were poorer and there were more children. Does Putin affect your potency? laughing
      2. +4
        26 November 2024 17: 52
        Especially with the Ukrainians, who provided about 30% of the USSR's GDP - it went down well.
        And you, Mr. Good, aren't you a Nazi by any chance? There are dancers who get in everyone's way. And they say that even their own balls, judging by today's demographics...
        1. -4
          26 November 2024 20: 07
          Open the statistics for the USSR. Only Russia and Belarus gave. The rest gobbled it up and didn't choke. You'll leave fairy tales about "the Muscovites gobbled it up" to your grandchildren.
          1. -2
            26 November 2024 23: 07
            what you call statistics of the USSR is essentially not one...at least because in the USSR GDP was not counted...but that's okay, all of this could have been recalculated later...

            but you don't understand what the man told you: he talked about production in nominal terms (that is, pieces, kilograms, etc.), and not about the average amount for a 100-year-old grandfather and a month-old baby, as in those tables of yours, in which the unfortunate Russians were all devoured...

            Yes, Belarusians had high production figures per capita. In some years even higher than in the RSFSR... but this is not connected with the fact that Belarusians are some unique hard workers... but with the range of goods produced... in order to produce MAZ, BelAZ, tractors, etc., first a miner needs to extract ore... then a metallurgist smelts metal from it...

            so that in normal terms the contribution of the Ukrainian SSR and even the Kazakh SSR to the all-Union budget was higher than that of the Belarusians. and without the labor of Ukrainian miners and Ukrainian metallurgists, not everything would have been so smooth in Belarus...

            or during the Great Patriotic War it would have been very interesting to see what screamers like you would have done without Baku oil...probably they would have poured screams about the Great Russians into tanks?

            In addition, the Ukrainian SSR had a number of absolutely unique enterprises, which were not even close to being in the BSSR. The same Yuzhmash...

            I would like to remind you that the USSR aircraft carriers were built in Nikolaev...how many aircraft carriers were built after the GREAT RUSSIANS (in their tongues) surrendered Nikolaev to independent Ukraine? What was built there, you are not even able to repair it properly...
            1. 0
              28 November 2024 20: 47
              aircraft carriers could have been built on the Caspian Sea... the monkeys were provided with factories and specialists from Russia. Maybe your Antonov is a true Ukrainian pig? Kraz is from Yaroslavl, a zhoporozhets is a Muscovite. etc. etc. If the hohol was so smart, he would have invented something himself after the collapse of the USSR, but they don’t hide the fact that they only rivet their own hulls using imported components. By the way, which is what Yuzhmash did. It assembled missiles from Russian components. What was the point of dragging spare parts to hell and going to pieces with the hands of savages, other than politics?
        2. The comment was deleted.
  3. -4
    26 November 2024 00: 32
    In general, the creation of hydroelectric power plants on flat rivers, at the moment, with the flooding of significant territories, is an extremely unreasonable action, enough of the Volga and Dnieper turned into hell, but at least there it is understandable, the times were different, there were no other options, and now RusHydro is spending money instead of working on normal projects.
    1. -2
      26 November 2024 00: 54
      There are always options. It was possible not to create a republic for a dead-end branch of lower primates. Anyway, they didn't say thank you and are not able to continue development themselves.
      1. 0
        26 November 2024 06: 24
        Have you already mastered Dugin's "goose" physics, a branch of the "upper" primate" or is your brain not enough???
    2. +1
      26 November 2024 09: 43
      Denis, this Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station is not flat at all. It is enough to look at the photos of this hydroelectric power station on Google maps, where there are mountains on both sides of the Tom River. This is approximately the same as with the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station and its narrow reservoir, unlike those you cited with the Volga, Dnieper and even the Novosibirsk hydroelectric power station, comparable in capacity to the Krapivinskaya. And indeed, the Ob Sea has not settled down in its flat shores in 70 years.
      1. -1
        26 November 2024 10: 26
        Mountains is a strong word, elevations, while the flooded area is 541 square kilometers, it is not correct to compare with the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station, the pressure there is 93 meters versus 34 meters at Krapivnitskaya.
        Hydroelectric power plants in the form we are now accustomed to seeing are a relic of the past, their time has passed. The future lies in the NPP-PSPP combination, fortunately for PSPPs, a smaller pool is needed and the river bed does not need to be blocked, hydroelectric power plants are for mountain rivers with high pressure.
        1. +1
          26 November 2024 10: 51
          For comparison, the Dniester Pumped Storage Power Plant (the largest in Europe) has a basin of less than 55 square kilometers.
          1. 0
            29 November 2024 08: 43
            Denis, Wikipedia seems to give the figure of 142 sq. km. But the most important thing is that this pumped-storage power plant was built not so much to generate electricity, but to create a reservoir with flow regulation for irrigation in agriculture and to prevent destructive flood consequences. And if there is a dam, then it would be a sin not to build a power plant on it.
            I won't take it upon myself to judge the question of how much the Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station is needed now. In my opinion, it is no longer needed....
            1. +1
              29 November 2024 15: 47
              You are confusing the Dniester hydroelectric power station (yes, it has a 142 square meter reservoir) and the Dniester pumped storage power station
              A pumped storage power plant is roughly two reservoirs of different heights next to a large water resource (to regulate the filling of reservoirs) with a station installed between them; at night, the turbines operate as pumps, pumping water into the upper reservoir, thereby taking on the nighttime decline in electricity consumption from the nuclear power plant; during the day, they operate as generators, passing water from the upper reservoir to the lower one, compensating for daytime peaks in consumption without the need to change the operating mode of the nuclear power plant.
              Thus, a pumped storage power plant is usually placed next to a river, but does not block the riverbed and the flooded area is much smaller since there is no need for a large volume of water.
              1. 0
                30 November 2024 10: 08
                Denis, thanks for the tip! Now I have reread and understood the operation of this cascade on the Dniester with its pumping stations. I admit, I did not know and did not pay attention to such an intricate scheme of a spillway with reverse pumping of water into the upper reservoir. It is clear that according to the law of conservation of energy, more is spent on such pumping than on the subsequent generation of electric energy by this water. But other goals are pursued here, and not only the generation of electric energy. And it turns out that in the end it is profitable in this particular case.
                1. +1
                  30 November 2024 11: 10
                  Nuclear power plant reactors do not like to work in the power maneuvering mode, it is better for them to work in a stable state, but the daily consumption of electricity is uneven, less at night, more during the day, it is a very difficult task to have exactly as much electricity in the network as is consumed at the moment, otherwise the consequences for both the end user and the substations can be very bad. In a general sense, a nuclear power plant should work in conjunction with another source of electricity, this can be a thermal power plant, but it is best for it to be a hydroelectric power plant / pumped storage power plant. They are built in conjunction. A nuclear power plant produces the required level of power, and a hydroelectric power plant, regulating the flow of water to the turbines, compensates for daytime peaks. In this case, a pumped storage power plant has the advantage that in addition to less collateral damage to nature and a smaller occupied area, it can not only produce power, but also consume it by switching to pumping mode. But as I indicated, the cost of its construction is approximately 4 times more than that of a hydroelectric power plant
        2. +1
          27 November 2024 11: 08
          It is the mountains and between them our Tom!
          1. +1
            27 November 2024 11: 12
            if there were mountains there would be a pressure of 100+ meters, but as I clarified yesterday and our calculators, by increasing the dam and, accordingly, additional flooding they want to increase the maximum pressure to 49-50 meters with a calculated 43-45
            1. -1
              27 November 2024 11: 15
              You, my dear, should have learned in the first grade what mountains are and what hills are. And what the difference is between them.
              You should have studied, not smoked a primer in the school toilet.
              1. +1
                27 November 2024 11: 18
                You are a boorish young man and before you write anything you should think about the place where you put your food.
                1. -2
                  27 November 2024 11: 23
                  Learn geography, my dear...
                  1. 0
                    27 November 2024 11: 56
                    read the primer again, young man, then maybe you will be able to understand that in my message there is an indication that within walking distance from my workplace there are those people who are currently working on the project to modernize this hydroelectric power station, and I have, let's say, more access to information and design documentation than a resident of Kuzbass.
                    And by the way, I also really hope that these people will be able to justify the uselessness of this project.
                    1. -2
                      27 November 2024 13: 22
                      The uselessness of this object, moreover, its harmfulness has long been substantiated and proven. And these people who are involved in the project are simply fulfilling the orders of those people who really want to get funds for their subsequent theft.
        3. 0
          29 November 2024 08: 27
          Mountains is a strong word

          Denis, there are mountains, but they are what they are. Or for you, mountains are only in the Pamirs or the Himalayas? I made a comparison with the reservoir at the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station not at all to compare capacities, but because of the stability of the coastline at such reservoirs, unlike flat ones. And what confuses you in the meager area of ​​541 sq. km. of such a reservoir, which is 4 times smaller than Krasnoyarsk? But I remember how many spears were broken over the project to build a hydroelectric power station on the Katun in the Altai Mountains near Chemal, and they finally abandoned its construction there. Although in the Altai Mountains the shortage of electric energy is not like in Kuzbass, from where, by the way, almost all the electric energy in the region comes.
          But there were also supporters of the hydroelectric power station who saw nothing wrong with a small narrow reservoir near Chemal, which would become a second Lake Teletskoye with all its charms. They say, why is no one bothered by flowing lakes in the mountains and how would the hydroelectric power station reservoir differ from such lakes?
          1. +1
            29 November 2024 08: 56
            Simply high-pressure "mountain" hydroelectric power plants start with a pressure of 60 meters, and at Krapivnitskaya only after a new modernization with the construction of a dam and, accordingly, a large flooding will the maximum pressure be 49-50, and the working pressure is 43-45 meters, so for me it is not a mountain one. As I wrote above, in principle, I do not like the concept of hydroelectric power plants as the main generating capacities, the cascades on the Dnieper and the Volga and the associated damage from them are enough. Now, with the experience and competence in the construction of nuclear power plants in Russia, the lot of hydroelectric power plants should be regulatory functions, and ideally, instead of hydroelectric power plants, we should start building pumped storage power plants, which are smaller in terms of flooded territory and are better suited for regulation and do not close the river bed, the problem is that they are about 4 times more expensive than classic hydroelectric power plants, and in our age of frantic capitalism, they do not want to find money for them.
            1. 0
              29 November 2024 09: 20
              There will be enough cascades on the Dnieper and Volga and the associated damage from them.

              And I do not argue... and even gave the example of our Novosibirsk hydroelectric power station with the unstable Ob Sea, where few people doubt the harm from such hydroelectric power stations and to step on the same rake again.... I even had a question, when will they decide to dismantle at least one of these hydroelectric power stations? They will drain the reservoir, return agricultural land to circulation and improve the biological state of the river. This is especially important for the Volga and the Caspian.
              1. +1
                29 November 2024 09: 42
                I'm afraid that the return to normal will take decades, our people once made a request to a specialized institute (I confess it was a long time ago, I don't remember which one) and the answer was that in the best case the territory will return to normal with the necessary financial injections in 12-15 years, I think this value can be safely multiplied by 1,5 times. Probably, until the main structural elements of their resource are completely exhausted, the existing hydroelectric power plants should not be touched, but new ones should be built very carefully, only where people definitely cannot do without them.
        4. 0
          1 December 2024 14: 02
          The Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station also provides water for Tomsk and a bridge across the river.
  4. +2
    26 November 2024 08: 37
    It's one thing to be a builder of an object. Another thing is to be the owner of an already built object. You can talk as much as you like about how everything was built on "bones". And yet, it is very pleasant to own this object.
  5. +4
    26 November 2024 10: 32
    What a bad Soviet Union!
    The Krapivinskaya hydroelectric power station was not completed.
    And Yeltsin, who destroyed the USSR, completed it?
    Did the genius Putin at least try?
    Or was there not enough money either?! Did everyone go to Aurus and Praskoveevka?
    1. -3
      27 November 2024 11: 07
      Why do we need this hydroelectric power station?
  6. -3
    27 November 2024 11: 06
    As a resident of Kuzbass, I would like to explain that at the moment this hydroelectric power station in Kuzbass is needed only by those who are trying to stir up another embezzlement of money...
    And money for the Tsivilev family and their accomplices is the only thing that they consider sacred.
    Tsivilev and Novokuznetsk Mayor Kuznetsov spent more than one billion rubles on the Donbass Defenders Square. Budget rubles.
    But at the same time, the waiting list for housing for orphans alone in the region is more than 9 thousand people.
    For whom and why the hell is this crap from the hydroelectric power station visible even without a microscope...
    Just steal money from among your people.
    1. +2
      27 November 2024 12: 14
      Can you prove it? Are you ready to contact the Prosecutor's Office?
      1. -3
        27 November 2024 13: 24
        Are you from Kuzbass? Or do you sit at the same table with Mr. Zivileff?
        How much damage this little bastard has caused to the nature of Kuzbass has not yet been fully calculated, but it is quite a lot.
        1. +2
          27 November 2024 15: 37
          Why don't you tell law enforcement about this?
          1. -3
            27 November 2024 17: 28
            Should I tell them this here? Or do the so-called "law enforcement agencies" never know about this?
            How far are you from Kuzbass?
            1. +1
              27 November 2024 17: 33
              Don't know how to file a complaint with law enforcement?
              1. -3
                28 November 2024 05: 09
                Are you a resident of Tel Aviv? I asked a question: How far do you live from Kuzbass?
                And in response to questions...
                What's the weather like in Haifa and Eilat?
                1. +2
                  28 November 2024 09: 01
                  And this is being told to me by a person who still hasn’t answered my first question.
                  1. -2
                    29 November 2024 10: 33
                    Greetings to Netanyahin from Siberia.
  7. 0
    4 December 2024 16: 31
    Maybe they will finish building it and put it into operation. We'll live and see... belay