ASSESSMENT OF PROSPECTS FOR SUPPLYING NONMETALLIC RAW MATERIALS TO THE REGIONS OF SIBERIA AND THE FAR EAST

P. G. USOV, V. B. BURAN, L. V. GAVRILINA

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Economics)

In the draft directives of the 24th Congress of the CPSU for the five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR for 1971–1975, it is stated that “the most important task in the field of locating the productive forces and improving territorial proportions in the national economy is the further accelerated development of natural resources and the building up of the economic potential of the eastern regions of the country.”

According to long-term projections, large-scale industrial and housing construction is unfolding in Siberia and the Far East; this requires an intensive increase in the capacities of the construction base and, in particular, the identification of sufficient raw-material resources of sand, kaolin, etc., to meet the needs for glass and building materials. Nonmetallic raw materials also find broad industrial application (molding sands, electrical insulating materials, etc.) in connection with the planned level of development of foundry production and the electrical engineering industry in the eastern USSR.

The reserves of glass sands and sandstones in the USSR are considerable and can fully supply the glass industry with raw materials. However, the distribution of glass-sand and sandstone resources is uneven, and such large regions as Western and Eastern Siberia and the Far East are not provided with their own raw-material base of glass quartz sands. A large share of the explored and exploited deposits of glass sands is concentrated in the European part of the RSFSR and in Ukraine.

The sharply increasing needs of the regions of Siberia and the Far East for the output of the glass and electrical engineering industries, the construction industry, and foundry production are associated with the urgent problem of expanding and strengthening the raw-material base of these regions.

Highly efficient use of natural resources is inseparable from long-term planning and, above all, from the rational location of productive forces. The most important requirement for the most efficient use of natural resources is their comprehensive development, the extraction from raw materials of all valuable components. In the regions of Western Siberia and the Far East, a number of glass-sand deposits are currently known, among which particular interest ...

represent the reserves of the Tugan deposit in Tomsk Oblast, which is a unique deposit in terms of the complex composition of its raw material.

Its nonmetallic raw material includes a number of components which, using the technology developed by Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, can be used practically without waste to obtain glass, molding, construction sands, kaolin, and other materials. At present the acute shortage of these materials in Siberia and the Far East is covered by imported raw material from the European part of the RSFSR (the Volga region, the Center, the North Caucasus). This leads, first of all, to the fact that a considerable quantity of raw material is transported over distances of up to 5–7 thousand km; moreover, as a rule, the cost of transporting the raw material in a number of cases exceeds the cost of its extraction by 3–5 times, reaching 10–15 rubles/t for quartz sands.

Let us carry out a preliminary analysis of the supply of nonmetallic raw material to the economic regions of Siberia and the Far East. In Western Siberia all glass plants producing tableware and special glass use imported raw material from the Tashlinskii quarry in Ulyanovsk Oblast, from a number of deposits in Moscow Oblast, and from the Ukrainian SSR. At present, quartz-kaolin sands from the Tugan deposit are of definite practical interest for the development of the glass industry of Western Siberia.

After the separation of dark-colored minerals, the sands are suitable for producing window glass, and after flotation treatment they can be used for the production of all types of technical glass.

The Ministry of the Construction Materials Industry of the USSR has determined that the Tugan deposit is the only raw-material base of glass sands in Western Siberia. Thus, the quartz sand of the Tugan deposit is of great national-economic importance, and its use will help expand the raw-material base of Siberia and the Far East. On the basis of this deposit it is possible to organize the production of highly transparent window glass, tableware glass of improved quality, mass production of glass blocks, profiled glass, and other modern materials. The demand for them has long not been met by local production.

In the foundry industry, quartz sand is consumed as a molding material in the preparation of molding mixtures in steel and iron casting.

Western Siberia currently consumes about 1 million tons of molding sands; the major consumers are enterprises of Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, and Tomsk oblasts and Altai Krai.

Despite the great demand for molding sands, their extraction in the region amounts to only about 140 thousand tons, with mainly the resource of the Antibes deposit in Kemerovo Oblast being worked. Molding sands, predominantly quartz sands, are brought to the enterprises of Western Siberia from the Urals (the Kichiginskii, Nizhne-Uvelskii, and Basyanovskii quarries). The cost of transporting 1 ton of sand from the Urals is 7–8.5 rubles; this figure alone clearly indicates that many millions of rubles are lost annually on the transportation of molding and glass sands alone. There is no need to emphasize once again the great interest for foundry production that the sands of the Tugan deposit may represent.

The high quality of the Tugan kaolins has also been established; from them it is possible to obtain refractory brick, facing and floor tiles, and various ceramic products. Siberia and the Far East do not

have any enterprises for the production of porcelain or faience and experience an acute shortage of insulating ceramic materials. Porcelain-faience ware and ceramic materials are brought into these regions in insufficient quantities from Vladimir Oblast and other regions of the European part of the USSR.

The development of the Tuganskoye deposit is of special importance in the development of the construction industry, where quartz sand is used as a filler in the production of aerated concrete, ordinary concrete, red building brick, and wall materials.

The directives of the Ninth Five-Year Plan once again emphasize the “advanced development of the construction industry and the building-materials industry in the regions of Siberia and the Far East.”

Analyzing the state of development of the wall-materials industry, it should be noted that, for the RSFSR as a whole, the deficit of wall materials at the end of the previous five-year plan amounted to 3.3 billion standard bricks. The greatest deficit was observed in the regions of Eastern and Western Siberia; it was somewhat reduced by deliveries from other economic regions. Production of wall materials in this five-year plan in the regions of Siberia and the Far East will be increased almost twofold. Especially large growth is planned in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Primorsky Krai, Altai Krai, Khabarovsk Krai, and Irkutsk, Tyumen, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Chita oblasts.

The output of wall materials is determined mainly by intra-regional needs, which are based on the volume of construction and installation work. In 1971–1975, an increase in construction and installation work in the regions of Siberia and the Far East by approximately 47% is envisaged, in proportion to which an increase in the production of wall materials is planned.

Thus, the comprehensive use of the components of the non-ore part of the Tuganskoye deposit ensures the production of a wide assortment of raw materials (sand, kaolin, etc.) for many branches of industry in the eastern regions of the country.

In the regions of Eastern Siberia and the Far East, the largest explored reserves of glass sands are concentrated in Irkutsk Oblast at the Tulun deposit, which is being exploited. These sands supply the glass plants of the Far East and Eastern Siberia (Ulan-Ude, Petrovsko-Zabaikalsky, Tulun, Pamyati 13 Bortsov, Raichikhinsk, Khabarovsk, Primorsky, and others).

The glass sands and sandstones of Krasnoyarsk Krai (Morozovskoye, Dzerzhinskoye, and others) are of low quality and require beneficiation. The Dzerzhinskoye deposit, moreover, is located as far as 70 km from the railway. This deposit is not being developed. The operating glass plant Pamyati 13 Bortsov uses imported sands from the Tulun quarry. And when the reserves at the Tulun deposit are exhausted, glass sands will be shipped from the Tashlinsky quarry of Ulyanovsk Oblast to Eastern Siberia and the Far East (a distance of 7,000–9,000 km). According to available data, the cost of glass sands rises sharply because of such transportation.

The need of the regions of the Far East for quartz sands for glass and foundry production is constantly increasing from year to year.

In order to meet the needs of industry with local raw materials, and also to eliminate costly transportation, the Chalganskoye deposit of quartz-kaolin sands was explored in detail in Amur Oblast.

sands, on the basis of which a mining-and-processing combine is being built. Nevertheless, it will not be able to meet the constantly growing demand for quartz sands in the regions of the Far East.

The demand for molding sands is met mainly by importing them from the Urals, the cost of which to plants in the Far East is up to 45 rubles/t. For example, the cost of delivering Kichigino sands to Krasnoyarsk is 9.3 rubles/t, and to Vladivostok—32.2 rubles/t, which exceeds the production cost of the sand by approximately 50 times.

Thus, one may conclude that there is an urgent need for the fastest possible development of the Tugan deposit, the further exploitation of which will help expand the raw-material base of Siberia and the Far East and meet the needs of all eastern regions for the coming decade.