People's lives at stake in nuclear plant closure

  • 2002-02-14
  • Howard Jarvis
VISAGINAS - Lena Judina's job is on the line. So is everybody else's in town.

The 36-year-old ethnic Russian's parents were among the first to arrive at Visaginas, a town built in the 1970s to house the workers at Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant.

Ignalina was projected at the time to become a huge four-reactor plant providing power for the western rim of the Soviet Union. However, construction stopped at two reactors after a series of environmental protests in 1988.

Visaginas, which lies at the end of a single road close to the Belarusian and Latvian borders, 150 kilometers north of Vilnius, has thrived on generous salaries and benefits.

It's now the 13th biggest town in Lithuania. But it could become a ghost town when Ignalina shuts down - probably in 2009 if the European Union gets its way.

Judina, who works as a secretary at the plant, is uncompromising in her criticism.

"No one is thinking patriotically in Lithuania," she says. "Our politicians in Vilnius are giving in to the EU too easily."

The whole town is tense. Everybody knows that mass redundancy may be imminent, yet nobody has been promised social support or a home and profession elsewhere.

Property is being offered at giveaway prices. The three-bedroom flat Judina owns with her husband Andrei is spotless, spacious and sumptuously decorated.

"Nobody wants to buy it," she says. "There are already lots of empty flats in our town. People are trying to sell them for kopecks."

Death of a reactor

Under pressure from the EU, the Conservative government of Andrius Kubilius decided in 1999 to close Unit 1 at Ignalina in 2005. It gave three reasons.

The large surplus of energy capacity Lithuania inherited from the Soviet Union exceeds what the country needs today by three times. This "great wealth," as Kubilius called it, goes virtually unused, despite energy exports to Latvia, Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

So, even with Ignalina closed, Lithuania would still have more than enough electricity to go round. With a capacity of 3,000 megawatts, the plant is Lithuania's main source of power, but other power generators, including 13 thermal power plants, are dotted around the country.

Secondly, Ignalina has RBMK reactors, the same type that exploded with devastating consequences at Chernobyl in 1986. The question of safety is a critical one, despite costly upgrades made to the power plant in the past few years with the help of Sweden, Norway, Japan and the United States.

However, the most significant argument for the closure of Unit 1 was the cost. The EU warned it could not guarantee that money it was promising for decommissioning would still be there if the decision to shut down the reactor was delayed.

And, it added ominously, accession talks for Lithuania may not be completed as planned this year.

Not fair

The engineers and technicians at Ignalina insist both reactors are healthy. A decision may have been made on the fate of Unit 1, but Unit 2, they say quoting its engineering specifications, can remain in operation at least until 2017.

Andrei Judin is a technician who operates the reactor control room in Unit 1. He believes without a doubt that Ignalina is safe. There's a clear line, he says, between those who are qualified to make decisions about a nuclear power station and those who are not.

"The experts say it's safe, yet the politicians do not," he says.

Both reactors at Ignalina are "fourth generation" RBMKs, the last of the type to be built. They were equipped with the best safety systems, he says. Comparisons with "first generation" reactors like Chernobyl are pointless.

"Chernobyl exploded because of human error. But in any case, the difference between that reactor and ours is like two BMWs - one made in 1937 and the other in 1990.

"Much older, less safe reactors at Smolensk, Kursk and St. Petersburg (Leningrad) keep working. It's such a shame ours have to close."

But the workers are putting up a fight. Last month, Aleksei Stelmach, the burly, Russian-only speaking head of Ignalina's independent trade union, called for legislation to be changed so the plant could be privatized and be free to attract foreign capital.

If its legal status was changed from state-owned to public company, the proposal goes, then private investment could be used to replace the reactors with Western European ones - while keeping the buildings around them in place.

"We have to try to change people's minds in Vilnius," says Stelmach. "Lithuania should remain a nuclear country. Nuclear energy is cheap and clean. But because EU membership is so high on the national agenda, no serious politicians can say no to the EU's demands."

However, officials in Vilnius are not totally against his ideas. Altering the legal status of Ignalina - which could be done after two articles to Lithuania's law on nuclear energy are amended - would be good for management, says Vice Minister of Economy Arturas Dainius.

"We can't realistically talk about changing the reactors, as Stelmach suggests," he says. "But if Ignalina was a public company, experts would sit on the board who would be fully accountable if anything went wrong. It would mean independence from big bureaucracy. And the state would be less liable for accidents."

Painful process

Decommissioning needs experience, know-how and serious funds. It begins with pressing a reactor's "off" switch, then the plant is dismantled and radioactive waste disposed of. Later, within the reactor, dismantling is done by robots. It's a dangerous process that can take up to 100 years.

This means that many of the 4,611 people who work at the plant will still be needed. But about half will lose their jobs in 2005.

Saulius Kutas, head of Lithuania's State Nuclear Energy Safety Inspectorate, worries about the possible side effects for people living under such a shadow. "Until a decision is made about what is happening to whom, workers are worrying about the future of their families, rather than watching the reactors - rather like a plane with a constantly distracted pilot."

A law on social guarantees for the people of Visaginas is currently being debated in Parliament. Overall social costs could be as high as 2.5 billion litas ($625 million).

Stelmach laments that while $200 million has been found by the EU to help cover the technical costs of decommissioning, "nobody seems to have thought about compensation for us."

Stranded

Judin is positive his Soviet-era qualifications will not be acceptable if he ever wanted to move to the West. And his experience with RBMK reactors is irrelevant outside the old Eastern bloc.

"I will need money to requalify," he says. "Lithuanians look pessimistically at the EU. What on earth can we do there? Clean the streets?"

He feels trapped until a decision on his future is made. He can't go on strike or organize a protest outside the Parliament in Vilnius, because it is against the law for energy sector workers to make such a stand.

He calls Stelmach's plans to privatize Ignalina "the last scream of the soul." They are honorable, but not realistic. "Who would buy our power station?" he asks.

But all is not lost, according to Visaginas Mayor Vytautas Rackauskas, who believes his town is the perfect location for new businesses.

"Practice shows that in towns of a similar size with no large-scale enterprises, people are doing good business over the Internet. This is our major objective."

Workers in the predominantly Russian-speaking town should be paid to learn Lithuanian, he argues, which will help break Visaginas' geographical isolation.

One or two business information centers have already sprung up, and tax reductions are being mooted for new businesses. Tourism in the picturesque, lake-filled Ignalina region is underdeveloped and has good prospects.

Many disused buildings lie abandoned near the power plant. They could be restored and used by businesses for production or storage.

Dainius argues that a change in legal status for Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant could help create offshoots and subsidiaries, for example ones that do welding or repairs for power plants in Russia. This would introduce workers to the business environment.

Stelmach is skeptical about all this business talk. "Am I supposed," he grumbles, "after an eight-hour shift at the reactor control desk, to think about plans for a new business that will guarantee the future security of my family?"

But Rackauskas is stubbornly optimistic. "Our town is an intellectual one. Many gifted people live here. I am sure all social problems can be solved successfully."

This doesn't help Lena and Andrei, who have still been given no indication what they will be doing in five years time. Andrei could be given work connected with the decommissioning. He could become a construction laborer building new storage facilities for radioactive waste. Or he could be made redundant altogether. "I feel that my whole life may be coming to an end," he says.