MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/. Geology experts took samples of sediments from Lake Pyasino, which is not far from Norilsk, to analyze its contamination, press service of the Great Norilsk Expedition said on Wednesday.

“The Great Norilsk Expedition’s team of geo chronology is the last to complete the stage of field works,” the press service said. “A group of scientists from Novosibirsk’s Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy worked for almost a week to drill the main well – in Lake Pyasino’s southern part, a few kilometers from the containment booms.”

Scientists say test results will show the rate of contamination from the oil spill. For five days, the team could not begin drilling as in strong wind and waves they could not fix the mobile drilling pad. On the sixth day only, the wind calmed down, and the scientists drilled five cores: four of them are under one meter long, and the fifth is four meters.

“We have drilled ten cores – in Lakes Melkoye and Pyasino – this was our minimum program. Our conclusions will be based on test results,” the team’s leader Sergei Krivonogov said. “We will see the chronology of layers, will see the contamination rates, if any, and will specify their chronology – that is when they appeared.”

Near Norilsk, the team took about 200 samples of the soil’s upper layer to make geo-chemical tests. Experts will learn the area’s geo-chemical background to see the man-made impact on the ecology.

Expedition to Taimyr

The Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the first time in recent years has sent to the Taimyr Peninsula, at the invitation of Nornickel, a big scientific expedition to conduct a large-scale examination of the area. Scientists will use the expedition’s results to present suggestions for industrial companies, working in the Arctic, on how to preserve the nature.

The expedition’s key points are watersheds of the Rivers Pyasina, Norilka and Ambarnaya, and Lake Pyasino. The expedition’s term is five months – from July to November. Before end of August, experts from 14 research institutes of the Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch have collected samples of soils, plants and sediments, and now they work on tests at the institutes’ labs. First results may be expected in November-December, 2020.