On December 23, 2020, the smelting shop in the village of Nickel carried out the last melting and was stopped forever. The workshop began to be built back in the 30s, when this territory belonged to Finland, and the village was then called Kolosjoki. At the end of World War II, when the territory was ceded to the Soviet Union, the destroyed plant was restored, and the village was named Nickel. It is located west of Murmansk, a few kilometers from the border with Norway. In the 80s, the plant emitted about 400 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide into the air per year, and in 1990 an environmental campaign was even launched in Norway “Stop the Soviet clouds of death”" The Norilsk Nickel company, which was transferred to the Nickel mining and metallurgical plant in the 90s, initially agreed with Norway on the modernization of enterprises on the Kola Peninsula, but then abandoned the program.
