The discovery of mineral deposits happens in different ways. In 1929, while looking through a collection of rock samples gathered in the area of the Monche tundra magnetic anomaly on the Kola Peninsula by a geographic team headed by G. D. Rikhter, Academician A. E. Fersman's attention was caught by a specimen of gabbro with poor sulphide impregnation. In his view, the specimen resembled rocks enclosing commercial copper-nickel ores found in Canada. This type of deposit was as yet unknown in the USSR, and there was an acute nickel shortage Therefore, by 1930 Fersman had already personally led a field team to make studies in the Monche tundra. Fersman's knowledge and intuition did not fail him; copper-nickel ores were identified on the terrace of Mount Nyud and on the northern slope of Mount Sopchi [1]. Four years later construction of the city of Monchegorsk and of the Northern Nickel Plant was begun. Northern Nickel produced nearly 150,000t of nickel from the ores in the region's first deposit, the Nittis-Kumuzh'e-Travyan deposit.Prospecting and geological exploration for nickel has since then continued nearly continuously until the present. From the combined efforts of groups of many organizations with the active participation of the Geological Institute of the Kola Scientific Center (Russian Academy of Sciences) and other institutes of the USSR (now Russian) Academy of Sciences, 12 deposits of sulphide copper-nickel ores were ultimately discovered on the Kola Peninsula. The region has been transformed into one of the principal ore centers of non-ferrous metallurgy of Russia, from which about 2.2 million tons of nickel alone have been mined in the past 60 years [2].
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