Europe wants nuclear back but Lithuania is still haunted by ghosts of its atomic past. Victoria Becker reports for Euractiv, partners of LRT English.
As nuclear energy experiences a renaissance in Europe, Lithuania is instead dismantling its atomic legacy at Ignalina, one of the world’s most powerful Soviet-era nuclear plants.
“For the next few hours, we will travel to the past,” Ina Daukšienė, who works as a senior communications specialist at the plant, told a group of 16 visitors gathered in the entrance hall of Lithuania’s only nuclear power plant.
Ignalina, in north-eastern Lithuania near the borders with Belarus and Latvia, began operating its two Soviet-built RBMK-1500 reactors in the 1980s and supplied around 70% of Lithuania’s electricity. But Lithuania’s path into the EU also ended its nuclear era. It shut down the first reactor in 2004 and the second in 2009.
Decommissioning, the process of dismantling a nuclear power plant and managing the radioactive waste left behind, has been under way since 2010 and is scheduled to be finalised by 2050.
