The political use of nuclear.
Three cases of NPP construction in Baltic Region and Belarus.
Andrei Stsiapanau
On the 25th of February, 2010 the Russian nuclear corporation “Rosatom” started
construction of the Baltic Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in the oblast of Kaliningrad. In
2008 president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, had signed a decree about building
the first NPP in the country. In July 2011 the Lithuanian government announced that
Japanese company Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy will be the strategic partner and investor
for the future Visaginas NPP, and, despite the results of the referendum in 2012,
Lithuanian political authorities are still planning its construction. On the one hand these
cases mark the transformation of the energy system in the region and the emergence of
the various modes of implementation and development of the energy politics/policies
after the USSR collapse. On the other hand these cases emphasize the persistence of the
nuclear programs and a nuclear renaissance in the period in between and after two major
nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
The Chernobyl disaster has opened nuclear safety controversies. Wellock (2013)
describes the interplay of political, engineering and expert safety discourses within the
soviet reactor-closure controversies in the CEE countries after the Chernobyl disaster and
the collapse of the USSR. These two events were close to each other in its symbolic,
political and temporal frameworks: “The most severe accident in the history of civilian
nuclear power occurred during Mikhail Gorbachev’s term of office, and some see
Chernobyl as heralding the end of the Soviet Union” (Schmid 2004:303). The time period
of the reactor-closure controversy concerns the exceptional period of political
transformations in Eastern Europe, the period of openness after the hard era of the Cold
War. This openness touched upon the nuclear industry: the western experts with their
experience and knowledge had access to the soviet technological know-how.
Wellock (2013) asks about the co-production between politics and technology in this
reactor-closure controversy but does not pursue totally the logic of the technopolitics and
1
technopolitical regime (Hecht 2004; 2011; 2013). He leaves some space for reasoning
about the technological choices regarding the reactor closure firstly as technical and
secondly as political decisions.
After almost 25 years since the collapse of the USSR and consequent transformation/
decomposition of the soviet technopolitical system, after over a decade of the EU
enlargement and the closure of the Chernobyl design reactors in new member States,
about the question is how persistent this kind of technopolitical logic is in the post-soviet
nuclear programs1: to build new reactors in Baltic region and Belarus is it a technological
choice or a kind of the political decision?
The brand new security system of the latest Russian reactor AES 2006, planned for the
NPPs in Belarus, Kaliningrad and St.Petersburg, is aimed at protection of the reactor itself
and the environment from the possible accident at NPP. At the same time the Russian
political authorities’ rhetoric is founded on the argument of the necessity of NPP
construction as a unique possibility to provide energy security in the post-soviet European
region. What is the energy and nuclear policy making in these countries?
From political properties of the grid to nuclear geographies
The use of nuclear energy crosses natural landscapes and political regimes, transforming
and consolidating them and creating the relations of dependency that go beyond national
political fields. As a legacy of the Soviet period, Russia is linked to neighbouring
countries by a common energy system that includes electric power lines, and gas and oil
pipelines. From the energy point of view, this set of networks is a strategic one; it
constructs a linkage between East and West, between two distinct energy systems and
energy regimes. Nevertheless, from the point of view of technopolitics the grid has
strongly pronounced political properties. After the collapse of the USSR it was used to
create the energy and policy dependency networks between countries attracted by
different political regimes (Balmaceda 2013): on the one hand, "the technopolitics à la
1
In this paper the methodological frameworks of Science and Technology Studies as well as a History of
Tehcnology combined with the political theory are used.
2
russe" strongly committed to the authoritarian political system allied to the regime of
Lukashenko in Belarus; on the other hand, there are three Baltic countries attached to the
Russian energy system from the Soviet era seeking to break free from this imposed
cooperation and to fit into the European energy system.
The existing energy system in the region has implicit temporal and geographic
parameters. If during the USSR the existing common energy system illustrates the soviet
capacity to build a unique large-scale energy system for the mass production to constrain
the industrial development in the West and in the USA. After the USSR collapse the
soviet energy grid was transformed in the technopolitical instrument of the relations of
political dependency, globally in the relationships with the EU countries and locally with
some former soviet republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Baltic States. Manipulating
by the natural resources, gas and oil, the Russian political authorities have established
different types of regimes with neighbouring countries: from the wider political support
in Belarus to the escaping control in Ukraine. The construction of the reactors designed
in Russia will re-map the energy system and nuclear technopolitics in the region.
The nuclear geographies emerge in a long-term perspective: the nuclear power stations
are not built for a decade but for much longer period (minimum 30 years). Especially
when it concerns not only one nuclear reactor but three nuclear power stations which are
going to be constructed in the region. The latter covers three countries and an enclosed
Russian region: the Baltic NPP (near Kaliningrad), the NPP in Ostrovetsk (Belarus) and
the NPP in Visaginas (Lithuania). The distance between Baltic NPP and two others is
almost equal – about 300 km – what forms a quasi geometric «playground» for the energy,
technology and politics interplays and displays. If we look closely at the nuclear map of
the region, placing the Belarus and Baltic countries in the centre, we will see that the
region is circled by the range of the RMBK (high power channel-type) reactors still
working or turned off: in the northern part – in Russia the old fashioned reactors at the
Leningrad NPP and two new designed reactors are under construction, in Lithuania the
decommissioned Ignalina NPP; in the Eastern part – in Russia the Smoleskaya NPP; in
the southern part – in Ukraine the disastrous Chernobyl reactors.
3
This territory is marked by the second attempt to re-map the nuclear geographies. The
first one dated back to the 1980 when the soviet government announced the ambitious
plans to construct the Western European line of the RMBK reactors. The Ignalina NPP in
Lithuania was the last one before the plan was interrupted by the Chernobyl disaster. The
current projects of NPP construction almost reproduce the soviet plans with the NPPs in
Belarus and Kaliningrad region and transform the nuclear landscapes by creating the new
nuclear networks and trajectories in post-soviet contexts. The first change concerns the
postcolonial empowerment by strengthening Russian energy dominance: the introduction
of the nuclear energy production into the energy system means the modernization and the
Russian nuclear technology portrayed as more compatible with existing soviet grids.2
The second change concerns the deployment of the new trajectories and as a consequence
of the nuclear networks. It involves transportation of the nuclear fuel from Russia to the
nuclear sites and the nuclear waste from the NPPs back to Russia3, the transportation of
the technical components to the NPPs construction sites, like the core-catcher or the
reactor itself, as well as the transfer of knowledge, experts and engineers from the “atom
cities” of Russia to Belarus and Kaliningrad region. These examples certainly trace the
geographical trajectories of the technical and nuclear things – the river route of corecatcher from Volgodonsk 4 to Belarus or the rail route of the nuclear waste from
Kaliningrad to the Urals – crossing the places that have never been associated with the
nuclear industry. At the same time these routes provide nuclear trajectories because these
networks connect nuclear territory and non-nuclear territory, enlarge the nuclear
geographies and establish the technopolitical relationship between the places of the
nuclear production, use and storage.
The timeframe and geography of the energy system in the western part of the former
USSR are caused by the long-time history of political relationships embodied in this set
of electric networks, gas and oil pipelines. The technopolitical logic behind this energy
2
The future Belarusian NPP with Russian reactors fits into the system of power lines of the
decommissioned Ignalina nuclear power plant, which covers the main part of Belarus and Lithuania.
3
According to the Russian legislation the nuclear fuel supplied by Russia can be taken for a long-term
storage and subsequent processing in the territory of the Russian Federation.
4
A city on the Volga river where the factory Atomash is placed from the 1970s to produce the VVER
(water-water) reactors and the associated equipment serailly.
4
network is not only guided by the postcolonial ambitions of Russia to maintain the energy
dependency in the region (especially dependency of Belarus and Ukraine) and continue
to use it as political lever. Technical components of the existing system make the
dependency deeper and almost irreversible: soviet design electrical power grid as well as
power stations, the kilometres of the electrical lines configured and compatible across the
region, the lack of modernization outputs and the high cost transformation effects.
From nuclear debates to political Lock-in
Baltic NPP (Kaliningrad, Russia)
The decision about the Baltic NPP construction has ignored the existing state of the
energy system as well as all discussions and existing projects about energy development
in the region. The discussions on energy issues in the Kaliningrad region started in the
middle of the 1980s when a plan to construct a coal-fired power plant was introduced. In
the beginning of the 1990s the political and energy situations had changed and the
Kaliningrad region found itself in an enclave situation: after the USSR collapse the
Kaliningrad region that kept receiving its energy from the common power grid became
dependent on transmission lines going through Lithuania. Thus the debates about the need
to change the energy system of Kaliningrad were renewed. As a consequence the Thermal
Power Plant 2 operating on gas supplies was built in 2005. Together with the thermal
power plant GRES2, which had originally built by the Germans in 1936-39 and called the
"East Prussian power station" they solved the energy supply problem.
From the technopolitical point of view, despite energy sufficiency the region was still in
a vulnerable situation due to the lack of energy autonomy. If the political authorities were
afraid of the possible energy isolation, the technical experts and scientists were talking
about the “isolated regime5”: "We feed on 2-3 lines that pass through the territory of
Lithuania from the Common energy system with Russia. Lithuania is, too, in this system,
and has significantly upgraded it and made a kind of jumper that can shut off the flow of
energy to the Kaliningrad region. There is a danger, though relations between the two
5
The technical term that describes the state of dependency on the energy system.
5
countries have become more pragmatic, but the energy independence from Russia still
highlights the EU policy. Thus the separation of the Baltic countries from the common
system with Russia and full reconnection to the EU system is planned"6.
This way the Kaliningrad region faces the choice: either to build and strengthen its own
power grid, or to modernize the existing one and connect to the European Union system.
It is hard to imagine that such a strategically important region as Kaliningrad would be
dependent on energy coming from the EU. Nor is it likely that Kaliningrad will move
away from the Moscow influence and become an enclave of freedom, especially in the
context of the authoritarian transformations of political regime in Russia.
To respond to this challenge various projects working on the autonomous energy system
were developed7. Nevertheless no one of the proposed projects has been considered the
nuclear program as opportunity for energy system in the region. In particular, due to the
technical 'incompatibility' of the nuclear power station within the energy system in the
region of Kaliningrad: the NPP can only work in basic mode, i.e. provides the necessary
level of consumption, all the possible variations of this level should be provided with
additional stations - shunting thermal power plants - which does not exist in the region.
Some experts in the field of energy consider this aspect as "attribute, inevitable technical
component of the nuclear power plant" that cannot be ignored or somehow overcome.
However, the project based exclusively on the political decision began to be implemented:
"This is a result of wrong decisions, we caught within a set of wrong decisions; even one
wrong decision in such a large infrastructure project, entails a long term obliged
implementation of many other decisions, all in total becomes irrelevant".8
6
The interview with Gnatyuk Victor, Ph.D., an expert on energy issues at the Technology University
(12/07/13, Kaliningrad).
7
Among them we can note the project prepared by Yuri Zlobin, former head of the Fuel and Energy
Complex of the Government of the Kaliningrad region and the project of calculations of transition to an
autonomous energy system by professor Valery Beley. Also to be mentioned separately the project,
prepared by experts from Germany within the framework of Tacis (Project ERUS 9804-Support to Regional
Energy Organisations) in December 2000 with the recommendations to build a 300 MW power plant with
two gas turbines. In spite of the existing projects and the local expertise, it was decided to build a nuclear
power plant "Baltic NPP".
8
The interview with Gnatyuk Victor, Ph.D., an expert on energy issues at the Technology University
(12/07/13, Kaliningrad).
6
In June 2013 the construction of the Baltic NPP was suspended due to social mobilization
and NGO activity as well as the lack of potential foreign investors. The project, however,
can potentially be re-started at any time in any form when the right conditions emerge.
While the logic behind the political lock-in does not provide a full and unconditional
rejection of the project - a threat to the stability of the energy remains.
Ostrovets NPP (Belarus)
The decision about the construction of a nuclear plant in Belarus was made on January
15, 2008 at a session of Security Council of Belarus headed by President Alexander
Lukashenka. After that the nuclear project obtained not only strongly pronounced
political design but also symbolical significance and legitimating power. First of all, this
project is a source of legitimacy for the political power and only in the second turn it is a
source of energy. According to some opponents of nuclear power in Belarus, President
Lukashenko needs his own nuclear power plant to fulfil his political ambitions. For
example, Georgii Lepin says that after the withdrawal of nuclear weapons and
announcement of Belarus a nuclear-free territory, “President Lukashenko wants to return
the nuclear power in the country to have it not much as additional source of energy but as
a source of power.”9 This nuclear power nostalgia, of course, can be examined within
decision-making in authoritarian regime where the nuclear power as an energy source can
be considered as well as a resource of political authority and as a resource of puissance.
However, the personal political ambitions of the authoritarian leader are not sufficient to
explain this decision. The decision is also based on a long-term transformation strategy
from a country affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to a country developing a
nuclear program.
In 1992, the government of Belarus adopted and approved the Program of Energy
Development and Energy Supply by 2010. For the first time after the accident at the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant the possibility of an NPP construction in the country had
been mentioned. In the past when a similar project on building a nuclear cogeneration
plant near Minsk was introduced in 1983, the project was suspended after the Chernobyl
9
The interview with Lepin Georgii, professor, expert in nuclear programs (Minsk, 04.07.2013).
7
disaster power plant 10 . In 1993 the concept of the draft Program of Nuclear Power
Development in Belarus was developed. After that a search for the possible locations of
the Belarusian nuclear power plant as well as for radioactive waste storage began.
In 1998 Belarus abandoned the development of nuclear program with the moratorium of
10 years. In 1997, the Commission on the Use of Nuclear Energy was set up, which
consisted of 34 scientists and activists from various research institutions. Most of them
supported the nuclear program, but some members of the Commission, such as Ivan
Smolar, Vasily Nesterenko, Georgii Lepin, actively opposed it. As a result of the
commission's work a 10-year moratorium on the construction of any nuclear objects in
Belarus was adopted. This decision is one of the few is not the only case where scientific
debates and expert assessments had such a direct impact on Belarusian policy making. It
can be assumed that such a decision was made possible due to the fact that the
authoritarian regime in Belarus had not yet consolidated its power. But when the decision
to build a nuclear power plant in Belarus was made by the President, there were no
discussions on alternative projects within the civil or scientific community.
The political decision to construct the nuclear power plant in Belarus appears on the
political agenda as inevitable from an energy point of view (the lack of own resources)
and from a technological point of view (the refusal to develop renewable sources of
energy). It is not being discussed based on scientific expertise as in 1998, it demonstrates
a kind of decision making that is strongly interwoven with the authoritarian practices of
the Belarusian regime.
Visaginas NPP (Lithuania)
After the Chernobyl accident in 1986 the safety of Soviet-designed reactors, including
the Ignalina RMBKs, became a very sensitive issue. This issue was discussed at the
Munich G7 summit in 1992 where the decision to shut down the reactors in Bohunice
(Slovakia), Ignalina (Lithuania) and Kozloduy (Bulgaria) was made (Wellock 2013).
10
The Institute of Nuclear Energy of the Academy of Sciences of the Belarussian Soviet Republic has
developed a proposal on the construction of the heating nuclear power plant (AST) in Belarus in
Minsk,Vitebsk and Mogliev.
8
Those nations that wished to join the EU were required to follow this decision. Visagino
Atomine Elektrinė is the corporation pursuing the construction of the nuclear power plant
in Lithuania, on the territory of Visaginas near the Ignalina station decommissioned on
December 31, 2009.
The shutdown of Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania was an inevitable and
irrevocable decision.
According to the experts, professor Yurginas Vilemas and
politician Kęstutis Škiudas, neither technology nor political arguments held forced
against shutdown, whether the energy security of the country or the possibility of updating
the station, the latter being rejected on economic and scientific grounds. Yet the decision
to shut the Ignalina NPP was a foregone conclusion because of political desiderata: a
political lock in.
In 1992 the Committee on Security of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, which included
Lithuanian specialists and foreign experts, was officially convened. One of the
Committee members said: «We declared that after the introduction of additional safety
systems of the second reactor, the station corresponds to the safety requirements. But
everyone already knows, especially all the foreign members, they had some instructions
that a political decision has been taken and the technical issue here is not a point. Nobody
asked us – ‘you are the experts, what do you think, should we, politicians, change
everything’ - this kind of question was not formulated»11.
Nevertheless, Lithuania managed to get some concessions for this political inevitability
by keeping the station operating for as long as possible. First of all, according to the
project documentation Ignalina’s reactor fuel channels were to be replaced every 15 years,
with the first replacement in 1998. But Lithuanian authorities managed to push the
shutdown schedule of the Ignalina nuclear power plant to 2004 and 2009, respectively.
On October 12, 2008, a referendum on the closure of the Ignalina nuclear power plant
was held in Lithuania. Its results (88,7% against the shutdown) had no legal ramifications
because of insufficient voter turnout (47.6%). But its political meaning was unclear: why
11
The interview with Yurgis Vilemas, (08.07.13, Kaunas)
9
have the Lithuanian authorities taken such a step in the context of irreversibility of the
political decision to close the Ignalina nuclear power plant. The reasons and explanations
may be found within the internal political games between the opposing forces,
conservatives and liberals, or in the area of democratic practices and procedures, where
the Lithuanian authorities wanted either to demonstrate the vitality of democratic
decision-making or to show the EU the value of people's choice. The situation after the
Ignalina NPP shutdown seemed for political authorities highly unpredictable and more
dangerous than the situation before, with operating nuclear power plant with dangerous
type of reactor. Therefore, holding this referendum was an attempt to turn back the
process of political irreversibility within democratic procedures. Such a game in
technology of democracy could prove to be winning in 2008 except for the insufficient
turnout, but in 2012 the referendum on the construction of the new station has shown the
opposite.
Following the change of government in Lithuania in 2008, the outlook for the
development of atomic energy changed, and the competition for the construction of the
new nuclear power plant was announced in late December 2009. The Lithuanian
government only in July 2011 announced that the Japanese « Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy»
will be the strategic partner and investor of the Visaginas NPP. This decision has marked
less the continuity within the western policy of technological development and more a
break with Russian technologies which had been central to Lithuanian development since
the 1950s, and not only in nuclear power.
In the referendum of October 2012 the people of Lithuania rejected the construction of
the nuclear power plant in Visaginas. The referendum passed in conjunction with the
legislative elections; the results showed not only the change in the coalition government,
but also marked a change of political attitudes from conservative to social-democratic
orientations. This is why some experts believe that during the referendum the Lithuanians
expressed their dissatisfaction with the government politics, rather than against the
development of atomic energy itself.
10
The logic of political lock-in behind the both political decisions of the shutdown of the
Ignalina nuclear power plant and of the possible construction of new nuclear power plant
is primarily based on the idea of discontinuity. In this case, it is not only about the break
from the Soviet technology, tradition and style, but also within the political practices: not
only the choice of Japanese technology and modernization of the energy system, but also
repeated attempts to attract people to participate in the political process and democratic
practices.
Conclusions
All these three examples mark the trajectories of the nuclear use in the post-soviet states.
The projects have all started from a political lock in: the decisions to build NPPs in three
cases seems to be irreversible, and is represented as irrevocable and inevitable.
Nevertheless, the nuclear programs have been pursued within different political contexts
ranging from authoritarian to democratic regimes. In the case of Belarus the decision to
build reactors more or less corresponds to the consolidation of the Lukashenka regime:
the nuclear program grew out of debates and discussions in the 1990s, and was cemented
within authoritarian political process. In the case of Russia, where the nuclear industry is
one of the pillars of state corporatism, the Baltic NPP was represented as a project of
openness less for public participation and more for foreign investors. But in this case it is
not a question of authoritarian practices, but of the inherent political nature of the Russian
nuclear industry which is a closed system or, in terms of Mumford, “system-centered,
immensely powerful, but inherently unstable” (Mumford 1964:2). The Visaginas case is
the example of how in democratic context political lock-in faces new democratic
procedures that do not – or perhaps cannot – ensure that the political decision will be
revised.
In all three cases we see some elements originated from the soviet period: the nuclear
geographies meet the soviet plan of the civil nuclear development before the Chernobyl
disaster; the decision-making within nuclear politics locked the debates, discussion and
11
public participation. In fact it is not as much about continuity within soviet technopolitics
as about modern political strategies that frame the nuclear technopolitics by translation
and (re) introduction of the nuclear issues to the political agenda.
The decision-making model in nuclear technopolitics uses the instrument of political
lock-in to frame any discussions and controversies. It is closer to the decision-making
model of “clear-cut decision”, “one that was unquestionable and irrevocable, and
consequently one it would not be necessary to review at a later time” (Barthe 2010:15).
This model is closely associated to the political qualities of political regimes in postsoviet states, especially in Belarus and Russia.
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