Republic of Khakassia
Khakassia's 6,400 MW dam powers 832,000 tonnes of aluminum annually—2026's rare metals cluster tests whether Siberian resource processing creates technological sovereignty or just another commodity link.
Khakassia exists because the Yenisei River exists—and because aluminum smelting requires vast quantities of cheap electricity. The Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam, Russia's most powerful hydroelectric station at 6,400 megawatts, supplies 70% of its output to RUSAL smelters in Sayanogorsk that produce 832,000 tonnes of aluminum annually. This is not an economy with a power plant; this is a power plant with an economy.
The coupling of dam and smelter created mutual dependency that survived the 2009 turbine hall explosion that killed 75 workers and temporarily halted the world's sixth-largest hydroelectric station. Reconstruction modernized equipment and added automation systems that by 2024 enable preventive maintenance impossible in the Soviet-era original. The investment revealed how essential Khakassia's power is: replacing 6,400 megawatts was never an option.
The 2024-2025 Siberian rare metals cluster extends this industrial logic. Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu inspected sites for a deep-processing complex spanning Krasnoyarsk Territory, Irkutsk Region, Khakassia, and Tuva. Sayanogorsk will host combined special economic zone and innovation center status. The Sorsky Ore-Dressing Plant—Russia's only molybdenum concentrate producer, exporting 95% to the Netherlands and China—anchors the extraction phase that processing facilities will complete.
By 2026, Khakassia will test whether resource processing substitutes for resource extraction as an economic strategy. The rare metals cluster promises "technological sovereignty" through domestic deep processing. Whether this investment creates genuine industrial upgrading—or merely adds another link in commodity chains that terminate in Chinese and European factories—depends on whether processing expertise follows processing capacity.