![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indrajaHere is the story of my last big journey taken in the beginning of March. I’m so lucky I did that without waiting any longer. This was the place I was contemplating for years. Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant was woven with legends and discussed on the news so often. It was launched in 1983, and was planned to be even twice bigger than it got to be. But you know, something happened and then more things did happen. There were protests (however even the official administration arrived to the decision to stop the development of the plant after Chernobyl). Also, the town of NPP workers, overwhelmingly pro-Soviet, Russian-speaking enclave of imported specialists, had its own opinions on the path the rest of Lithuania was taking. (Whole enterprise was a Soviet and not a local project, which simply happened to be situated in that place). Later, the EU would accept new countries, however did not wish to have RBMK reactors, even retrofitted to make them even more unlikely to cause a continental catastrophe. So they demanded the plant to be shut down, and financed the project. There was a referendum to build a new one, this time of Japanese quality (no tsunamis in that lake). I voted ‘yes’, however the majority didn’t. Eventually, the plant was quite forgotten by the public. Yet when the HBO filmed all the control room in the INPP simulator, and something on the outside as well, the queue for the in-depth tour grew to be half-a-year long. (Until the quarantine was announced; then even the bus service for workers got problems).
This spring, there came the moment when I understood there should be no more delays. They are going to dismantle the thing in a couple of decades, there’ll simply be nothing if I wait as usual! (There was also a scent of the looming shadow in the air).
How do I reach a place so remote? My friends offered to ride their car. Surely, I refused. This is not a place you simply drive to (even if most people do this). (Especially, if you are no good for most purposes after spending one hour in the car).
It was a place I could walk to. 135 km from Vilnius, and just 12 km from the Visaginas train station: by forest, a bit by road, a little bit through the gardening-settlement.
And then there is The Zone, with just a path by an old cemetery in the dark spruce forest populated by the locally Polish-Belarusian names. A carefully mended bridge over a rivulet flowing in waterfalls over a great beaver dam. If you leave the path, there is the largest Lithuanian lake Drūkšiai, with one of its shores in Belarus already. The forest ends, and here you see a post with a warning this is a state-border security zone (with no real border in that place and with no zone on other areas of the shore. They just didn’t want anyone to walk north of NPP). So you turn away and go to the dirt road, which becomes a water-filled ditch. (That’s why walking. You can still walk on a narrow border on the side).
And here you see it, the still far-away ventilation-chimneys sticking above the dry grass, and the nearby electrical substation still live, buzzing in the silence long before it came into a view. Welcome to “Ignalina” Nuclear PP. Sure, the place is still guarded (there are new-built nuclear waste storage sites on the spot as well). The security drives their car slowly on the road. I simply nod to them and rush to a steep gravel hill to catch an unexpected angle of NPP after they are out of sight. The NPP has “no photo” signs, so I take no photos from the spots where they are already legible. With the place so huge, one even doesn’t need the close-ups.
Otherwise, I am alone (and would be freezing in the wind if I only stop moving). The most strange thing is to smell the fresh air from the lake and to hear variety of birds calling while standing besides this impressive human-made object.
And then there is a place where a magic gift from my friend lets me into a mini-bus waiting for a small shift of weekend-workers of the plant. (I could walk back, however the one-way ride to the town is so comfortable). The only place where one can buy a ticket is the bus company’s office in the town Visaginas, however I came here by leaving the town some km away. My friend left the ticket for me in the train station :)
The bus also visits the brand new nuclear waste storage site (named ‘a construction place’ just in case). No one would be happy if I just walked here.
Then, I spent some time in Visaginas, visiting their own lake, also a small swamp lake, and walking to the train station through the forest. This was my third time in the town – and the first one when I managed to get to the place of its legends.
This spring, there came the moment when I understood there should be no more delays. They are going to dismantle the thing in a couple of decades, there’ll simply be nothing if I wait as usual! (There was also a scent of the looming shadow in the air).
How do I reach a place so remote? My friends offered to ride their car. Surely, I refused. This is not a place you simply drive to (even if most people do this). (Especially, if you are no good for most purposes after spending one hour in the car).
It was a place I could walk to. 135 km from Vilnius, and just 12 km from the Visaginas train station: by forest, a bit by road, a little bit through the gardening-settlement.
And then there is The Zone, with just a path by an old cemetery in the dark spruce forest populated by the locally Polish-Belarusian names. A carefully mended bridge over a rivulet flowing in waterfalls over a great beaver dam. If you leave the path, there is the largest Lithuanian lake Drūkšiai, with one of its shores in Belarus already. The forest ends, and here you see a post with a warning this is a state-border security zone (with no real border in that place and with no zone on other areas of the shore. They just didn’t want anyone to walk north of NPP). So you turn away and go to the dirt road, which becomes a water-filled ditch. (That’s why walking. You can still walk on a narrow border on the side).
And here you see it, the still far-away ventilation-chimneys sticking above the dry grass, and the nearby electrical substation still live, buzzing in the silence long before it came into a view. Welcome to “Ignalina” Nuclear PP. Sure, the place is still guarded (there are new-built nuclear waste storage sites on the spot as well). The security drives their car slowly on the road. I simply nod to them and rush to a steep gravel hill to catch an unexpected angle of NPP after they are out of sight. The NPP has “no photo” signs, so I take no photos from the spots where they are already legible. With the place so huge, one even doesn’t need the close-ups.
Otherwise, I am alone (and would be freezing in the wind if I only stop moving). The most strange thing is to smell the fresh air from the lake and to hear variety of birds calling while standing besides this impressive human-made object.
And then there is a place where a magic gift from my friend lets me into a mini-bus waiting for a small shift of weekend-workers of the plant. (I could walk back, however the one-way ride to the town is so comfortable). The only place where one can buy a ticket is the bus company’s office in the town Visaginas, however I came here by leaving the town some km away. My friend left the ticket for me in the train station :)
The bus also visits the brand new nuclear waste storage site (named ‘a construction place’ just in case). No one would be happy if I just walked here.
Then, I spent some time in Visaginas, visiting their own lake, also a small swamp lake, and walking to the train station through the forest. This was my third time in the town – and the first one when I managed to get to the place of its legends.