At the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania, everything is huge. The building, which housed the two RBMK reactors and the engine room, is 660 metres long. The two 1500 MW reactors, commissioned in 1983 and 1987, were the most powerful in the world at the time. A third of the 4 planned reactors was under construction when Lithuania chose to join the European Union. 5,000 men and women were producing electricity in the geographical triangle of Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus. So it’s hardly surprising that the plant’s employees speak with pride of their industrial heritage. But the closure of this Chernobyl-type boiling water plant was a sine qua non condition for Lithuania’s accession to the European Union. The reactors were definitively shut down in 2004 and 2009 respectively, and their dismantling is largely subsidised by the European Union. Read more
Ignalina NPP: FECER visits the colossal worksite
