> Abandoned Nuclear Power Plant in Crimea
This abandoned facility is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive nuclear reactor in the world. Which remained unbuilt.
Construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant began in 1975 and it was supposed to provide electricity to the entire Crimea. In 1984, it was even declared an All-Union Komsomol construction site. At the height of construction, two (!!!) echelons of building materials were being processed per day.
But in 1987, a famous fur-bearing animal settled in these places. There are two reasons - the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the unfavorable economic situation in the USSR. The readiness of the station at that time was almost 80%...
I will give more detailed information at the end of the post, after the pictures. In the meantime, look what is happening with one of the biggest unfinished projects in the USSR today
2. We approach the station. Administrative building and observation tower 
3. There are broken bricks and concrete crumbs everywhere. In the background are the first power unit and the engineering building 
4. Station engineering building. Satellite dishes hint that there are people here 
5. And here we have the first power unit. There is also a unique giant crane here. Only he no longer builds the station, but destroys it.
I want to stop here for a moment. The fact is that during construction, a unique polar crane was already installed in the reactor building of the first power unit - the Danish Kroll K-10000. With the help of this crane, further lifting, transport and construction operations inside the reactor compartment were to be carried out. It was the tallest crane in Europe. In 2003, the State Property Fund sold it for... 310 thousand hryvnia with a starting price of 440. Even sold for scrap it would have cost more.
Before its dismantling, the high-altitude crane was used for base jumping. The jumps were carried out from the lower (80 m) and upper (120 m) booms of the crane.
Today, a similar crane is installed here, but smaller in size, for dismantling the station. You can appreciate its size against the background of the standing “nine”. 
6. And this is what this station is needed for today... Powerful equipment, looking like a toy against the background of a concrete monster, paints its body, extracting metal reinforcement from there. We'll come back here later, but for now let's go to the reactor room. 
7. We enter the power unit. The scale and thickness of the walls with shutters is impressive 
8. Transport corridor of the power unit 
9. Entrance to the reactor zone. Metal as thick as your arm. 
10. There, thick cables go inside the reactor and cutting sounds are heard. There's a lot of metal being cut out there. 
11. The reactor control panels are at the end 
12. And there was the reactor itself... We look at it from the lower corridor. The ends of the cooling pipes are visible
13. Bolt found here. Obviously not from a children's construction set. I was surprised by the almost complete absence of corrosion over so many years - only an oxidized surface 
14. Let's return to the tap. 
15. Cabin 
16. Rollers. Under each pair there is a narrow-gauge railway 
17. Pipes are cut like sausage. Just not on the table, but on the metal 
18. One of the pipes was adapted into a change house 
19. There is a lot of technology. She's in demand 
20. But this old thing has clearly been standing here for a long time 
21. The cylinders here are like replaceable batteries in a TV remote control 
22. Destroyed external passage from the engineering building to the power unit 
23. What remains after the work of the “metalworkers” 
24. They built with shock, they break with shock 
25. Somewhat reminiscent of the chimneys of stoves in Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis 
26.
27.
28. Panorama of the site under the engineering building. Everything is cut out here 
29. Panorama of the metal cutting site 
Some information from Wikipedia:
By the time construction of the station was stopped, 500 million Soviet rubles in 1984 prices had been spent on the construction of the nuclear power plant. Approximately another 250 million rubles worth of materials remained in the warehouses. The station began to be slowly torn apart for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal. There is evidence that in the early 90s, surveys were carried out, the purpose of which was to “adjust” additional geological justification for the closure of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. However, this was only a formal reason - by the end of the 80s, the situation in the USSR economy worsened so much that almost all major construction projects were curtailed, both in the energy sector and in industry, transport, and urban planning.
From 1995 to 1999, discos of the “Republic KaZantip” festival were held in the turbine department.
In 1998-2000, the subsidiary enterprise East Crimean Energy Company, created on the basis of the nuclear power plant, sold the station’s property for 2.204 million hryvnia. By February 1, 2003, only the special building, workshop block, reactor department and oil and diesel facilities remained on the balance sheet of the Eastern Crimean Energy Company.
In 2004, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine transferred the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy to the Council of Ministers of Crimea. Further, the Council of Ministers of Crimea had to sell the received property of the nuclear power plant, and the money had to go to solve the social and economic problems of the Leninsky district of Crimea, and in particular the city of Shchelkino.
After this, the remaining parts of the Crimean NPP were to be sold: the reactor compartment, the block pumping station, the workshop building, the cooler at the Aktash reservoir, the dam of the Aktash reservoir, the supply canal with a water intake tank, the station’s oil and diesel facilities, and a diesel generator station. Further, it is known that at the beginning of 2005, the Representative Office of the Crimea Property Fund sold the reactor compartment of the Crimean NPP for 1.1 million UAH ($207,000) to a legal entity whose name was not disclosed.
There is evidence that the VVER-1000 reactor, which was never installed in the room prepared for it, was cut into scrap in 2005
The nuclear power plant has been featured in many films, the most famous of which was “The Inhabited Island” by F. Bondarchuk, which was filmed there in 2007.
Nuclear fuel was not imported here, so the nuclear power plant does not pose a radiation hazard.
A little-known fact: the station has an almost complete twin - the abandoned, unfinished Stendal nuclear power plant, 100 km west of Berlin in Germany, built according to the same Soviet project from 1982 to 1990. By the time construction stopped, the readiness of the first power unit was 85%. Its only significant difference from the Crimean NPP is the use of cooling towers for cooling, rather than a reservoir. Currently, the Stendal nuclear power plant (2010) is almost completely dismantled. A pulp and paper mill now operates on the territory of the former station; the cooling towers were dismantled in 1994 and 1999. With the help of excavators and heavy construction equipment, the dismantling of the reactor shops is being completed.
(to the 25th anniversary of the closure of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant)
I remember well one long-ago business trip to the Nikolaev region. Beautiful Bug rapids, happy and carefree faces of local residents. For a minute it suddenly seemed as if time had stopped here. It’s as if the calendar shows not Ukraine in the mid-2000s, but the early 80s. Clean streets, well-kept houses, a park and a city beach on the river. Friendly and smiling people, young mothers walking with strollers and flower beds everywhere. This is how I saw Yuzhno-Ukrainsk. 80% of the local population work at one state enterprise - a nuclear power plant, which generates 17-18 billion kWh of electrical energy throughout the year and covers 96% of the electricity needs of the three southern regions of the country (Nikolaev, Kherson, Odessa)
A large industrial enterprise provides work, stable and relatively high wages with a full social package not only to residents of the satellite city, but also to nearby settlements. Two months later, fate brought me to Shchelkino, a satellite town of the former Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. However, there the picture was completely opposite. Dead streets, shabby facades of houses, lack of evening lighting and a completely broken local House of Culture "Arabat". I never saw flower beds or working fountains during my two days in this slowly dying city. But there were often drunk men and grumpy women. In their eyes there is complete hopelessness, despondency and anxiety for tomorrow. Shchelkino lives only two months a year - during the summer season. Almost every second or third resident of the city considers it a blessing to buy a garage. It doesn't matter that he doesn't have a car. After all, in the summer you can live in the garage and let vacationers into your apartment. Local kulaks are considered not only those who have successfully rented out housing during the season, but also those who have...a boat. After all, she is a real nurse, and in Azov in winter there is so much bearing... It was thanks to the sea that hundreds of families survived here in the hungry 90s.. The two cities, as it turned out, had different fates. But the history of their foundation began simultaneously with the construction of local nuclear power plants and almost at the same time.
Construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant itself began in 1981. However, three years earlier, at the foot of Cape Kazantip, a working settlement for the builders of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant was founded, which, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR of May 11, 1982, was named Shchelkino, thereby perpetuating the name of the outstanding Soviet scientist, three times Hero of Socialist Labor Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin. In 1979, the first three residential buildings were put into operation. And the Crimean NPP itself a year later received the status of a republican (Ukrainian) Komsomol construction site, and on the threshold of perestroika - in 1984 it was already an All-Union shock construction site.
By that time, the city already had 25 thousand inhabitants. However, in 1987, at the stage of 80% completion of the first power unit and 18% of the second, construction of the station was suspended. The main reason is that the site on which they built was considered geologically unstable. In addition, there was a fear of a repeat of last year’s Chernobyl tragedy. . The design capacity of the Shchelkino NPP was 2,000 MW, with a subsequent increase to 4,000 MW (construction of two additional power units) using VVER-1000/320 type reactors.
The planned launch date was 1989. But ironically, it was the summer of this year that went down in history as the time of the final mothballing of the construction site.
If you look in more detail, there were several reasons. Firstly, the sad experience of Chernobyl. Secondly, there was a powerful earthquake in Armenia in December 1988. 
Then, Crimean seismologists received an urgent task: to identify what the maximum earthquake on the peninsula could be. Scientists wrote a “ten” in the report, and the station construction project was designed only for 8 points on the Richter scale. And finally, the third reason for closing the station is money. The difficulty of financing was already seriously felt in 1987, when large construction projects began to wind down throughout the Union, both in the energy sector and in industry, transport, and urban planning...
In addition, the public actively got involved. During the elections of delegates to the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in the spring of 1989, real battles broke out in the Crimean districts. As a result, doctors and an environmentalist, who actively used anti-nuclear power plant speeches in their election campaigns, won in three districts.
When it became clear that there was and would not be money to complete construction, there were ideas to create a training center on the basis of the Crimean NPP to train nuclear plant dispatchers of the USSR Ministry of AtomEnergo. But these ideas were not destined to come true. The union collapsed...
500 million Soviet rubles were spent on the construction of the nuclear power plant in 1984 prices. Approximately another 250 million worth of materials remained in warehouses. The station began to be slowly torn apart for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal. Although in the mid-90s the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant even became a brand for four years. From 1995 to 1999, discos of the “Republic of KaZantip” festival were held in the turbine section of the station under the slogan “Atomic party in the reactor.”
And yet, they tried to return part of the money spent on the main republican construction project. In September 2003, the Property Fund sold the unique Danish crane “Kroll” K-10000, installed for the installation of a nuclear reactor, for 310 thousand hryvnia, with an original price of 440 thousand hryvnia. Before its dismantling, the high-altitude crane was used for base jumping. Extreme jumps were carried out from the lower (80 m) and upper (120 m) booms of the crane.
After this, the remaining parts of the Crimean NPP were to be sold: the reactor compartment, the block pumping station, the workshop building, the cooler at the Aktash reservoir, the dam of the Aktash reservoir, the supply canal with a water intake tank, the station’s oil and diesel facilities, and a diesel generator station. It is known that at the beginning of 2005, the Representative Office of the Crimean Property Fund sold the reactor compartment of the Crimean NPP for 1.1 million UAH ($207,000) to a legal entity whose name was not disclosed.
There is evidence that the VVER-1000 reactor, which was never installed in the room prepared for it, was cut into scrap in 2005.
Crimean nuclear power plant today (photo by patteran) 
A little-known fact: the station has an almost complete twin - the abandoned, unfinished Stendal nuclear power plant, 100 km west of Berlin in Germany, built according to the same Soviet project from 1982 to 1990. By the time construction stopped, the readiness of the first power unit was 85%. Its only significant difference from the Crimean NPP is the use of cooling towers for cooling, rather than a reservoir. Currently, the Stendal nuclear power plant is almost completely dismantled. A pulp and paper mill now operates on the territory of the former station; the cooling towers were dismantled in 1994 and 1999. With the help of excavators and heavy construction equipment, the dismantling of the reactor shops is being completed. This is exactly how practical and careful Germans approached the problem of unnecessary long-term construction.
What's in Shchelkino? Empty boxes of abandoned houses, dilapidated industrial premises, rusty skeletons of metal structures. The nuclear power plant itself was sold for scrap several years ago, and now one of the Ukrainian construction companies is removing the remaining pieces of iron from it. From the outside, the station looks even more dilapidated. Taking turns, hunters come to her for equipment, for non-ferrous metals, for various building materials... Photographers, both local and visiting, both professionals and amateurs, regularly visit. On weekends, whole groups of paint and strike ball fans come. The collapsing building of the power unit is an excellent platform for games according to the Stalker scenario. And a few years ago, the filming of the film “Inhabited Island” even worked here. Surprisingly, it was here, in the ruins of the station, that Fyodor Bondarchuk saw a picture of the planet Saraksh.
There are also frequent guests here - lovers of extreme tourism, who also dreamed of wandering around the zone. And a tour of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, unlike Chernobyl, is practically safe. After all, they never managed to deliver nuclear fuel to the peninsula...
Meanwhile, the local station managed to get into the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive power unit in the world. Billions of rubles have been thrown down the drain: neither money nor much-needed electricity due to the recently worsening energy crisis in Crimea. The frozen, half-looted station, as a symbol of mismanagement and short-sightedness, will stand on the soil of Kazantip for decades to come.
There is now little left of the Crimean nuclear power plant. There are abandoned and dilapidated buildings on a vast territory. The remains of the workshops are densely covered with grass and trees. Things that had even the slightest value were dug up, torn out and taken away. The nuclear reactor, the shaft lining and the control panel of the nuclear power plant were cut into non-ferrous metal. And if precious metals and equipment were taken first, today you can only profit from iron in concrete slabs.
A hundred meters from the reactor workshop, several people in overalls are monotonously dismantling another building. A tractor demolishes a wall and a crane carries a concrete slab to the ground, where workers break it down. They want to get to the fittings hidden inside. All that was left of the concrete workshop was the foundation and a pile of stone chips. The further fate of the still surviving buildings is frightening in its predictability.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The huge gray box of the reactor workshop dominates the territory of the facility. The workshop is as tall as two nine-story buildings and more than 70 meters wide and is built on a six-meter foundation. You can enter it through a huge round hole. The metal door, half a meter thick, had been dragged away long ago. There is no radiation danger, since nuclear fuel was not delivered in time. Admission is free, there is no security.
The building accommodates 1,300 rooms, box-like premises of various purposes and, accordingly, sizes. The inside of the boxes is empty and dusty. There are pieces of wires dangling somewhere and trash lying around. Light does not penetrate into the reactor workshop at all. Heavy silence, the belated echo of footsteps and the closed space of the premises thicken the atmosphere. It's unsettling to be here. Random noises are unnerving. Nevertheless, there is no hurry to leave the reactor. This can be described in one phrase: “Terribly interesting.”
“Everything was done slowly in Crimea”
Toropov Vitaly, head of the reactor workshop:— Scientists and specialists have been working on the Crimean nuclear power plant project since 1968. In 1975, a satellite city was founded - Shchelkino, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist. This is the village where nuclear workers and their families were supposed to live. When I arrived in the Leninsky district in June 1981, at the site of the future station, one might say, the wheat was still heading and they were just beginning to dig a foundation pit. I was sent here from the Kola Nuclear Power Plant. After all, in Soviet times it was like this: after studying at the university, you start with the lowest positions, then rise higher. No one would immediately appoint me as the head of the workshop.
According to the plan, the power plant was supposed to be operational in four years and ten months. But management was recruited in advance: senior engineers and heads of four main departments. That was the rule. They had to control the receipt of documentation and equipment, monitor the progress of construction and installation work, and gradually recruit personnel. The salary during this period was, of course, small.
It was important for me to understand the geography of the workshop. When the reactor is operating, you have only a few seconds to avoid receiving a lethal dose of radiation. You need to act instantly, know exactly where each valve is located. Even in complete blackout mode, you must be able to work by touch, like submariners.
The reactor was supposed to be launched in 1986, but due to the low pace of construction it was not completed in time. I associate this with the specifics of Crimea. Everything was done slowly here. For example, they managed to build one kindergarten per year. And it seemed like there was money, but the party doubted it and some party members were against it. And then there was an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and construction stalled. A wave of discontent arose. Many believed that Crimea would become the second Chernobyl.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
In 1988, I was sent to Cuba, where I worked for three years at the Juragua nuclear power plant. When I returned, the station had already been closed and torn apart. Its readiness was approximately 90 percent. There was less than a year left for installation and commissioning. If they had managed to launch it, the station would not have been closed. In addition, equipment for two more blocks was stored in warehouses. Moreover, the equipment is high quality, with imported parts. If Vladimir Tansky, director of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, had taken control of the situation and kept the course of events in check, nothing would have been stolen. It was necessary to wait until the hype about Chernobyl died down and became less loud.
We planned to build four reactor units, each of them would produce one million megawatts. One million was enough for Crimea, so the first block was built to stop the transfer of electricity from the mainland. The second block was needed to provide hot water to Feodosia and Kerch, to rid the peninsula of dependence on coal and boiler houses. Using the third block they wanted to desalinate sea water. The whole world is doing this. We wanted to fill Crimea with fresh water and not depend on it. The fourth block is to sell, to the Caucasus, to earn money.
“The Crimean nuclear power plant was mistakenly compared with Chernobyl”
Anatoly Chekhuta, instrumentation and automation master:— I arrived at the station as soon as they gave me the directions: I wanted to get an apartment early. There might not have been time later. My specialization is the maintenance and operation of various control and measuring equipment. Before that, he worked for ten years at a nuclear power plant in Tomsk. It was a secret facility, and in official documents it was listed as a chemical plant. Upon arrival in Shchelkino, my radiation level was 25 roentgens. Five years later it dropped to 15. Now, probably, there is nothing. Although for a long time the level remained stable at 5 roentgens.
One of the problems with the closure of the Crimean nuclear power plant is the general secrecy. There was not enough publicity. In Soviet times, nothing was disclosed: projects, research, data. When environmentalists raised a wave of indignation in 1986, they had no official information, so they could make any assumptions. Even the most ridiculous ones. As an example, in the event of a nuclear power plant accident with a constant southeast wind, radioactive fallout could fall on Foros. Where Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev vacationed in the summer. As a result, a terrible story was made out of this.
The Crimean nuclear power plant was mistakenly compared to Chernobyl. After all, these are two different types of reactors. In Chernobyl they used RBMK-1000, in Crimea - VVER-1000. I won't go into details. But it’s like heating water over a fire in a pan without a lid or a closed thermal container. The difference is huge.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The reactor did not produce plutonium, but produced steam. The steam rotated turbines, which produced electricity. If in Chernobyl the RBMK was buried nine floors into the ground, then the Crimean VVER was carefully placed on a small platform. There was a three-stage protection system. The reactor room was covered with a continuous layer of reinforced concrete. In an emergency, the doors were hermetically closed and the air was sucked out of the room. During an explosion in a vacuum, the pressure was zero. So a catastrophe could not happen. By the way, the reactor shop building could withstand a direct collision with a jet plane.
The same pressurized water nuclear reactors are used on submarines. Same type, just smaller. In 1988, there were 350 nuclear-powered boats in the Soviet Union. And so far not a single accident has occurred. From the point of view of physics and design, it is a very reliable device.
Another argument of opponents of construction was the lack of research into the location of the nuclear power plant. Specifically, seismic. Allegedly, the reactor was built on the site of a tectonic fault, and with small underground tremors an accident could occur. But later, in 1989, when independent Italian seismologists arrived, they concluded that it was possible to build at least ten reactors, there was no fault. This means that the Soviet specialists were right, and the location was chosen well. The reactor itself was built to withstand a magnitude nine earthquake. But it was already too late, and the station was closed.
50 tons of steam per hour
Andrey Arzhantsev, head of the heat supply section of the central heat supply complex:— TsTPK is a workshop for thermal and underground communications. Under my leadership there was a start-up and reserve boiler room or PRK. To explain it more simply, the start-up and reserve boiler house consists of four boilers that produced 50 tons of steam per hour. Due to this, hot water and heat were supplied to Shchelkino. Now the city has forgotten such words - “hot water”, but before it was 75 degrees in the tap.
The main purpose of the PRK is the commissioning of turbines and warming up the reactor. Without it, not a single nuclear power plant is built. But having completed its task, the boiler room is dismantled, and, for example, a gym is created on its basis.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The basic project of the Crimean “atomic” was special. This did not exist anywhere at that time. The turbines had to be cooled with sea water. We planned to take water from the Aktash reservoir and use it as a cooling pond. Water came to Aktash from the Sea of Azov. That is, there was an unlimited supply. As a result, the nuclear power plant produced environmentally friendly energy.
After the closure of the nuclear power plant, Shchelkino is gradually dying out. I think there is no need to explain what happens to a city when it loses its main enterprise. The population dropped from 25 thousand to 11. In terms of intellectual potential, Shchelkino was considered the most developed place in Crimea. Here every second person had two higher educations. Aerobatics specialists from all over the Soviet Union. And instead of the industrial heart of the peninsula, Shchelkino becomes a resort village. What you see now is a tenth of what the city could have become. There are not even streets here, the houses are simply numbered. Among the attractions are the market, the city council and housing and communal services.
Some nuclear workers leave, others stay. Those who had somewhere to return left. Construction of nuclear power plants is being frozen throughout the Union. There was no work. At least there was an apartment here. Of course, no one was working in their specialty anymore. I currently hold the position of director of a boarding house.
“Crimea needs a nuclear power plant”
Sergey Varavin, senior turbine control engineer, director of the Shchelkinsky Industrial Park Management Company:“It’s hard to say who was right and who was wrong then that the Crimean nuclear power plant began to be stolen. The property was redistributed between customers and contractors. About a hundred companies were involved in the construction. Each of them wanted their money back, so the equipment was sold off. In addition, after the collapse of the Union, something was perceived as free, so they carried what they could. There was no high-profile case regarding this, so there is no need to talk about theft. Now it’s impossible to figure it out.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The lands were redistributed among construction participants. Some people refused plots, others left. Part of the territory remained in the hands of owners and tenants, the rest became the property of the city. It is planned to create an industrial park on the site owned by the City Council. The project began to be created in 2007. But due to lack of funding it was never implemented.
Now the project is included in the Federal Target Program for the Development of Industrial Parks in Crimea. One billion 450 thousand rubles will be allocated for the development of the business plan. Our task is to prepare everything for the future investor. Collect all documents, arrange the territory, create infrastructure, and so on. All that remains is to begin construction. The focus is very different: from a gas turbine station to an agricultural complex.
But ask any operator of our nuclear power plant, and he will answer: “Crimea needs a nuclear power plant.”
“All Crimeans would have cancer”
Valery Mitrokhin, poet, prose writer, essayist, member of the Russian Writers' Union:— Immediately after being accepted as a member of the Writers’ Union, I was sent to the construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. There I am writing a book of essays, “Solar Builders.” Three chapters evoke mixed reactions. They are devoted to problems that could arise as a result of the construction of the station. I was accused of undermining the material condition of the country. About a billion rubles have already been spent on the facility. At the exchange rate at that time, one dollar was equal to 80 kopecks, that is, looked from the bottom up. A lot of money. Therefore, the nuclear power plant is rightfully considered the most expensive unfinished project in the world.
The book about the sun builders was published in 1984. He refused to throw out the chapters, and for this they stopped publishing me for ten years and did not allow me to appear on regional television and radio.
There were problems, the contractors and nuclear workers knew about them. Everyone was silent. When I started digging deeper and communicating with experts, I came across such a volume of information that it was impossible not to write about it. This threatened disaster. If they had built the station even according to all the parameters, a second Chernobyl would have happened.
First, the hired workers were slacking. Some standards were not followed and mistakes were made. For example, the brand of cement was mixed up. If you look at the buildings today, they are crumbling, the concrete is crumbling. And not much time has passed. I saw with my own eyes how they built the “glass” for the reactor. There is no talk of any tightness. There would be leaks. A microscopic hole would be enough to irradiate the soil within a radius of tens of kilometers.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The second is the specificity of Crimean seismicity. We are shaken every year. The tremors are small, but they are there. And the tectonic fault exists. It runs from the Feodosia Bay to the Kazantip Bay. The two plates are constantly in contact with each other. While the construction of the power plant was underway, not far from the coast, an island appeared and disappeared in the Sea of Azov. A clear confirmation of my argument. It is not clear why seismologists hid such facts.
The third is cooling the turbines using a reservoir. I'll explain it with my fingers. Water enters the station, cools the turbines, returns to Aktash and again to the station. Constantly circulates and gets dirty. To avoid this, they make an exit to the Sea of Azov. Now the water is constantly renewed. But at what cost? Ten years later, Azov turns into a nuclear swamp. The Sea of Azov is connected to the Black Sea. This means that a little later he will suffer the same fate. Next up is the Mediterranean Sea. Not to mention evaporation and precipitation. By this time, all Crimeans would have cancer.
Having learned about everything, I become one of the founders of the environmental movement. I begin to travel around Crimea with my book. Understand that environmentalists did not inflate the problem from scratch, being afraid of Chernobyl. There were complaints. There were no answers. We wanted to save the peninsula. Of course, the project was good, the reactor was excellent and modern, but the location was chosen in the wrong way. I'm sure of this.
In 1990, the film “Who Needs an Atom” was released. We are talking about the use of nuclear energy in the energy sector. It is noteworthy that one of the fragments of the film is dedicated to the problems of the Crimean nuclear power plant. The passage contains two opposing points of view.
Crimean Nuclear Power Plant - a great unfinished project
The construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant was frozen despite the high level of readiness of the facility... What is this? A prudent and wise move, the ability to sacrifice much to save even more in the future? Or is it a manifestation of blatant mismanagement and simply a crime against the state, against Crimea and Crimean people?
The question is all the more relevant now that the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, which supplies the peninsula with electricity, is located on the other side of the state border and when the energy independence of the new federal district within the Russian Federation is one of the most difficult tasks to achieve.
In February 1969, the Minister of Energy and Electrification of the USSR P. S. Neporozhny instructed the Teploelektroproekt Institute to analyze possible options for locating a nuclear power plant in Crimea and present a feasibility study for the best of these options to the scientific and technical council of the Ministry of Energy. As a result of the survey work, it was proposed to build a nuclear power plant on the northern coast of the Kerch Peninsula near Cape Kazantip and the salty Aktash Lake, which was planned to be used as a cooling pond for condensers of steam turbine units. This proposal was accepted and approved by a resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR dated July 26, 1977.
The technical design of the Crimean NPP was developed by the Kharkov branch of the Teploelektroproekt Institute of the Main Project of the Ministry of Energy and Electrification of the USSR. In September 1978, the project was ready. Then, its refinement continued for two years and, finally, in November 1980, the Crimean NPP project was approved by the USSR Ministry of Energy and Electrification.
In accordance with the project, the station was to consist of two power units with an electrical capacity of 1000 MW each. This was enough to provide electricity to the entire Crimean peninsula, as well as create a foundation for the subsequent development of industry in the region - metallurgical, mechanical engineering, chemical. In the future, it was envisaged the possibility of placing two more power units of 1000 MW each on the territory of the nuclear power plant and increasing the total power of the station to 4000 MW.
The main equipment of each nuclear power plant unit under the project included: a water-cooled power reactor VVER-1000, four main circulation pumps GCN-195, four horizontal steam generators PG-1000, a steam turbine K-1000-60/3000, an electric generator TVV-1000- 4 with a voltage of 24 kV and a power of 1000 MW.
Simultaneously with the planning of work on the creation of a nuclear power plant, the terms for creating the corresponding infrastructure were approved. In October 1978, on the southern outskirts of the fishing village of Mysovoye, stretching from the coastal steppe to the ridge at Cape Kazantip, a working settlement for the construction workers of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant was founded, designed for 20 thousand inhabitants.
It all started with the first high-rise building and dormitory, then an access road was laid for the town of Lenino - a nuclear power plant construction base, and a post office was built. In subsequent years, the number of apartment buildings constantly increased, a school for one and a half thousand students, a kindergarten were built, and the Samarlinsky reservoir was created to provide drinking and technical water.
The village grew quickly and soon began to resemble a small town. In the spring of 1982, by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Ukraine, it was given the name Shchelkino, in honor of Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1953 in the department of physical and mathematical sciences, the first scientific director and chief designer of the Chelyabinsk-70 (Snezhinsk) nuclear center.
Construction of the first unit of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant began in 1981. According to the plan, construction of the power plant was to be completed in 1989. The cost of the project was 751.5 million rubles in 1984 prices. 650 million rubles were allocated for production facilities, and about 100 million rubles for housing construction, healthcare, culture and education facilities. The technical and economic indicators of the Crimean NPP corresponded to advanced technical developments in the global nuclear energy industry of the 1970-1980s.
Intensive construction of houses and roads began in Shchelkino; a powerful boiler house was built. The city was populated by young nuclear specialists (graduates of Kyiv universities) and experienced employees of operating Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Workers, many of whom were young, flocked to the construction site of the station. Valery Anatolyevich Shtogrin was appointed head of construction. The popularity of the facility being built was so great that in 1984, the construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant received the status of an All-Union Komsomol shock. A temporary line was laid from the Kerch branch of the railway, and at the height of construction, two trains of building materials arrived along it per day. Moreover, this very considerable amount was mastered in approximately the same period of time. An experimental solar power plant with a capacity of 5 MW was built next to the nuclear power plant - it was supposed to become a backup source of electricity for the nuclear plant.
A unique polar crane was installed at the design site in the reactor building of the first unit, with the help of which lifting, transport and construction operations inside the reactor compartment were to be carried out. During the construction of the nuclear power plant, it was needed for storing equipment (reactor parts, steam generator housings, compensator, main circulation pipelines and pumps, etc.), and then installing them at the design site. After the launch of the station - to carry out transport, technological and repair work to maintain the nuclear reactor.
The creation of a new energy facility was on the rise, construction proceeded without significant deviations from the schedule with the planned launch of the first reactor in 1989, nothing foreshadowed trouble.
But April 26, 1986 came. At 1 hour 24 minutes, a powerful thermal explosion of the channel uranium-graphite nuclear reactor RBMK-1000 occurred at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In terms of the number of deaths and injuries as a result of this accident, as well as the economic damage, the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is regarded as the largest in the entire world history of nuclear energy.
How did the Chernobyl disaster affect the fate of the Crimean nuclear power plant? Less than a month had passed since the accident, when articles began to appear in the press about the extreme danger of nuclear energy in general and about the inadmissibility of the construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant in particular. A large number of people took part in the discussion. Environmentalists and “greens” of all stripes were especially active. Even those who did not understand the fundamental difference between the Chernobyl channel uranium-graphite reactor RBMK-1000 and the pressurized water-cooled power reactor VVER-1000, which was to be used at the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), entered into the dispute.
Quite quickly, opponents of the KNPP moved from ordinary environmental protests to “scientifically based” statements about the inadmissibility of building a facility on the Kerch Peninsula due to the fact that the selected site is located in the zone of tectonic faults that arose as a result of the shift of tectonic plates at their junctions. It is believed that such zones are the most likely places for earthquakes.
The Crimean Peninsula and the entire coast of the Krasnodar Territory are located in a zone where relief formation is still ongoing, so earthquakes are common here. Numerous historical treatises that have survived to this day describe some particularly destructive disasters on the peninsula.
To feel the tense atmosphere of the debate that took place over the fate of the Crimean nuclear power plant in the 1980s, it is enough to turn to the press archives. One of the main platforms for controversy was the magazine Smena.
In the article “Crimea: a zone of special risk?”, published in issue No. 21 in 1988, a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR Valery Mitrokhin wrote:
In May of this year, an all-Union meeting was held in Yalta on the environmental problems of Crimea. All meeting participants were unanimous in their attitude towards the construction of a nuclear power plant in Crimea. I will cite just a few statements from scientists.
M. Ya. Lemeshev, Doctor of Economics, Professor (USSR Academy of Sciences):
- There is a complex and alarming environmental situation in Crimea. How to fix the situation? Under no circumstances should the construction of new industrial enterprises be allowed, no matter what apparent benefits may justify it. Immediately stop the construction of the nuclear power plant. It affects not only Crimea, but also the Caucasus and the Sea of Azov.
G. G. Polikarpov, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR):
- The choice of location for the future nuclear power plant does not stand up to criticism. The station is located on a fault where there is a danger of increased seismic activity. Drainage and flooding are no less dangerous. Even the normal operation of a nuclear power plant threatens the destruction of fish stocks in the Sea of Azov... In the event of an accident, the likelihood of which is increasing throughout the world, the consequences for small Crimea will be catastrophic. It is known that after the accident in Chernobyl, the design and construction of the Odessa ATPP, Minsk, Chigirinsk, Krasnodar nuclear power plants, and the fifth and sixth units of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were stopped. With even greater justification, such a decision should be made regarding Crimea.
V. M. Lyakhter, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, laureate of the USSR Council of Ministers Prize (NIIS Hydroproject, Moscow):
- Crimea has ideal conditions for generating energy using wind. The Kerch Peninsula, the slopes of the yayla above Yalta, the “gate of the wind” - Alushta, the outskirts of Sevastopol, are very promising. Before the war, the world's largest wind power plant was successfully operating in Balaklava. A project for a unique installation of five thousand kilowatts was developed in Moscow. Alas, the authors of these works suffered a difficult fate during the years of the cult. The project also died. But today we can offer Crimea wind power machines for one hundred and one thousand kilowatts, which we have developed and are implementing. According to our calculations, ten to twelve installations of one thousand kilowatts will make it possible to close all the boiler houses of the South Coast. Ten cars will cost four million rubles. Compare with the costs of nuclear power plants.
In the same year, in addition to the Yalta meeting, many discussions were held at various levels. Scientists, designers, and station builders took part in them.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Mineral Resources E.P. Tikhonenkov stated that the studies conducted to assess the seismic hazard in the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant area do not meet IAEA requirements. The nuclear power plant industrial site is located in the most seismically active area. At the stage of preparing the feasibility study, deep wells were drilled only to 15–18 m. Such a depth did not make it possible to trace the occurrence of inclined limestone layers. Mud volcanism poses a significant danger. A well was drilled at Cape Kazantip, in which mud was encountered at a depth of 147 m. And Kazantip is practically a mud volcano that has not yet erupted.
Mitrokhin’s article also reports on violations committed during construction.
When in the frosty December of 1982, with great fanfare, the first cube of concrete was laid into the foundation of the reactor shop of the future nuclear power plant, it was said that the builders were laying high-strength concrete in the foundation, because anything else was unsuitable here. Even then, everyone knew that at first it was necessary to pour this very foundation continuously in order to get a monolith. And what? From the very first days at this site, work was carried out in violation of the necessary requirements, the continuous pouring regime was not maintained, and the concrete itself was not always of the required quality. So what happened was not a monolithic structure, but a layer cake. The performers do not hide this. Moreover, they do not hesitate to call a spade a spade. Some believe that an object of such quality will never be accepted for operation, while others say: it’s our job to complete the amount of work.
And they did - in the reactor compartment, some components were assembled several times, the pipeline of the low-pressure industrial circuit of the hermetic zone was redone within four months due to design problems.
At the beginning of 1988, about 300 process pipelines were defective. The joints were repaired multiple times during the installation process - instead of the permissible two-fold repair. The management of the installation of technical equipment and pipelines of the reactor compartment has been entrusted to young specialists who have no experience in such installation. And yesterday’s electric welders worked as masters in welding process pipelines!
Of particular concern was such a section of the reactor compartment as the Bohr tank, which is part of the accident containment system. And here the welding is done poorly. Among other things, the stainless steel sheets used for cladding the room turned out to be such that even with visual inspection, about 15 tons of metal were rejected. The project does not provide for other types of control...
The welding of the bottom and shell is especially bad. Due to a 100% defect, the station management did not accept the job. In this form, the tanks remained in the sealed-off room. The carbon lining - the bottom of the hermetic zone - separating the sealed part of the reactor compartment from the unsealed part, which is part of the accident localization system, was made in winter, in rain and mud, was digested many times and was also covered with concrete, despite the prohibitions of V.I. Tansky, the director of the nuclear power plant.
Ground pressure sensors show that the reactor room rests unevenly on the soil - the strongest pressure is at the central point of the foundation. That is, the base of the reactor stands, as it were, at the top of the pyramid. During an earthquake, the reactor may simply collapse.
Of course, there was a feasibility study. But it caused bewilderment even among non-specialists. In this document, for example, it was reported that there are no large populated areas in the forty-kilometer zone of the nuclear power plant. They say that the largest villages are located only in the southwestern direction, towards Feodosia. I counted both the settlements and the number of inhabitants. There are about 60 villages in this zone, and over 50 thousand people live in them. Immediately outside the zone (44 km) is Feodosia with its extensive resorts. Moreover, the Feodosia Bay with the famous “Golden Beach” falls into the forty-kilometer zone along with part of the Black Sea. 54 km from the nuclear power plant - Kerch. Simferopol is 150 km away. Moreover, the regional center and the southern coast of Crimea are located in the main direction of the winds prevailing in the area of the future nuclear power plant! The coasts of the Arabat and Kazantip bays are a resort area in which boarding houses, holiday homes, and pioneer camps are located.
In the area where the nuclear power plant is located there are nature reserves: the floodplain of the Sem Kolodezei River, Astana Plavni, Cape Kazantip. It is not difficult to guess what awaits them in the near future. Here's a completely new fact. As a result of the flood, the cooling pond of the nuclear power plant (Aktash Lake) overflowed. The dam built by the builders collapsed. Salt water has flooded the man-made forest, which is dying.
It is possible that over time, radioactive particles will begin to accumulate in the groundwater under the station and the cooling pond, since the groundwater is directly connected to Azov. These particles will sooner or later penetrate into the sea. Confirmation of this possibility can be “read” in feasibility studies.
The article states that in the summer of 1986, scientists from the Institute of Mineral Resources and the Department of Seismology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR conducted field research that allows them to assert that fault tectonics in the area of construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant is widely developed. The fault (North-Aktashsky), which has a displacement width of up to 150 m and dips to the northwest at an angle of 65–80°, passes in close proximity to the construction site, and movement along it continues at the present time. The area is in the 7 point zone. NPP designs are designed for 8–9 points. But with such a low quality of construction, such a margin of safety is fiction. NPP structures may be distorted.
Adding fuel to the fire were 25 tremors with a magnitude of four, which were recorded from April 8 to April 10, 1987 in the construction area of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. For the first time in the history of seismic observations, the epicenter was in the Azov Sea...
Young nuclear power plant foreman Alexander Lyutkevich sent the editors of Smena a sarcastic response to the article “Crimea: a special risk zone?” He gave a list of headlines from Crimean newspapers before and after May 1988. Before: “Grow, atomic!”, “Growing atomic,” “Steps of a big construction project,” “Atom will be peaceful,” “Village full of sun.”
They even published the following poems:
...I hear a first-grader spelling:
Lenin, Motherland, progress,
Work, mother, communism, nuclear power plant...
After: “The resort and the nuclear power plant are incompatible,” “We are firmly against it!”, “Is the goal noble?”
Later, in September 1989, another voluminous material was published in this magazine under the title “An Alternative to Krymbas.” Its author, Vladimir Animisov, visited the “all-Union Komsomol construction site” and talked with the builders of the Crimean nuclear power plant. The journalist was shown the reactor, walked around the power unit, and told about the protection systems. Vyacheslav Vaiskam became the shift supervisor. “Before Chernobyl there was a principle: provide energy at any cost. First of all - plan! - said V. Weisk. - Violations were committed at all nuclear power plants. It was enough to put a piece of cardboard in place of the relay to disable the protection. The management turned a blind eye to this. If you hold the block, well done! And if I turned off the unit according to the instructions, I risked getting a scolding: “You could have pulled the unit!” Here, on Krymskaya, such violations are simply technically impossible. Everything is on microprocessors, under a seal.”
The following arguments were also given:
N. P. Bereza, head of the Gosatomenergonadzor inspection:
- How does the Crimean nuclear power plant differ from Chernobyl? There there was one barrier between man and fuel, here there are three. In Crimea there is a fundamentally different type of reactor - VVER-1000, not RBMK. In addition, the reactor itself is enclosed in a hermetic reinforced concrete shell - this is the same sarcophagus.
O. Kozak, electrician, chairman of the NPP labor council:
- Some kind of mass nihilism has appeared - to close everything, to deny... Well, let's close the station. And in Crimea, two million square meters of housing must be built before the year 2000. Where to get energy? To reconstruct treatment facilities at factories, you also need electricity.
V. I. Tansky, director of the nuclear power plant:
- The public demands a referendum on our station. Now this is pointless, since the opinion is known in advance: “close it!” And I would propose this option: let’s commission the first power unit and stop construction there. And we will use the entire million kilowatts for social and cultural purposes. We will close the boiler houses, switch transport to electric power, and provide electricity to agriculture. And then we will hold a referendum. I am convinced that even if 12 points shake, the whole of Crimea will fail, one nuclear power plant will remain unharmed. However, already at five points the reactor automatically turns off.
Despite their conviction, none of the nuclear power plant builders was going to fight to the death for this facility. If the government had decided to repurpose the station into a training center, then this would have happened. But such a center would create new problems: after all, it would also consume energy, quite a lot, up to 40 MW. This would worsen the already large energy deficit in Crimea.
The article “An Alternative to Crimea” by V. Anisimova ends with a series of rhetorical questions: “What if 10 points are confirmed and there is no nuclear power plant? This will not solve, but will add to the problems! Shchelkino, Kerch, Feodosia are not designed for such seismicity. In the heat of debate, this was somehow forgotten. Now is the time to urgently develop options: what will have to be done? Demolish entire cities and rebuild? Strengthen old houses?
So, in the USSR, the construction of a large number of nuclear power plants, nuclear thermal power plants and nuclear heat supply stations was stopped. The reasons for this were the Chernobyl disaster and subsequent powerful public pressure, as well as the unfavorable economic situation in the country. As a result, in 1989–1990 the construction of the Crimean, Bashkir, Tatar and Rostov nuclear power plants was stopped. The construction of the Crimean NPP was stopped when the first unit was 80% ready, and the second - 18%.
On October 25, 1989, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on the repurposing of the Crimean NPP under construction into an Educational and Training Complex for the training of operating and maintenance personnel of nuclear power plants. The subsequent history of the Crimean NPP is associated with several of its re-profiling and privatization of unfinished construction projects, which was carried out by the State Property Fund of Ukraine and the Property Fund of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
By the time construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant was stopped, about $100 million had been spent on it. There was approximately another $50 million worth of materials left in warehouses.
In 2004, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine transferred the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy to the Council of Ministers of Crimea. The Council of Ministers was supposed to sell the received property of the station, and use the money to solve the social and economic problems of the Leninsky district of Crimea, in particular the city of Shchelkino.
The objects of sale were: a reactor compartment, a block pumping station, a workshop building, a cooler at the Aktash reservoir, a dam at the Aktash reservoir, an inlet canal with a water intake tank, the station’s oil and diesel facilities, and a diesel generator station. At the beginning of 2005, the representative office of the Crimea Property Fund sold the reactor compartment of the Crimean NPP for $207 thousand to a legal entity whose name was not disclosed.
The most ridiculous thing in this story with the sale of the reactor department was what the new owner did with the acquired reactor vessel - a complex creation of the minds and hands of many people who worked on its creation. The hull was not only not loaded with nuclear fuel, but was not even installed in the shaft prepared for it. In the best traditions of post-Soviet mismanagement, the reactor vessel, delivered to the construction base of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, simply lay in the bushes, waiting in the wings, and now the hour has come. With a merciless hand, it was cut into pieces and sold as scrap metal, like a rusty pipe or a discarded piece of metal that no one wanted.
One can imagine the state of people who rushed from their homes to the Azov steppe to build a nuclear power plant, and then suddenly found themselves out of work. Shchelkino is a satellite city of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. What to do in this “satellite” when the station is gone? We are not talking about a construction crew that can move and quickly find a new job. We are talking about 14 thousand specialists of various professions, abandoned to the mercy of fate.
After the construction of the nuclear power plant stopped, residential buildings continued to be built in Shchelkino. A bus station was built here in 2000, and a gas boiler house was commissioned in 2003...
Sunset on the Azov coast of Crimea is probably one of the most beautiful phenomena on our planet. If you look west along the coastline from the village of Novootradnoye, you will see the sun setting behind the hills of the Kazantip Peninsula. The sun quickly, as always in the south, bends towards the ground, and just at the moment when it touches the horizon, a silhouette of a gigantic size becomes clearly visible against its background, and above it - a thin cross, similar to a cemetery.
This is what a person who went on a summer vacation to Shchelkino before 2003 could have written.
The silhouette is the first power unit of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, a titanic structure made of concrete and metal. The cross is a unique crane K-10000, developed in 1978 by the Danish company Kroll Kranes A/S. Only 15 units of these cranes were produced (13 were purchased by the USSR, 2 cranes were purchased by the USA). This double-tower, self-propelled, fully slewing, rail-mounted crane was intended for the construction of industrial structures with a mass of mounted elements up to 240 tons. In September 2003, the crane was dismantled, removed from the site of the unfinished Crimean Nuclear Power Plant and sold to Middle Eastern buyers.
Before dismantling, the high-altitude crane was used for base jumping. The jumps were carried out from the lower (80 m) and upper (120 m) booms of the crane.
The same Kroll crane was used in the construction of the 4th power unit of the Khmelnytsky NPP in the city of Netishin; previously, cranes of this type were used to erect the buildings of the Zaporozhye NPP and the South Ukrainian NPP.
The first thing that attracts attention on the territory of the Crimean station is the traces of looting and destruction. Just as recklessly as with the reactor vessel, the metal hunters got rid of the power unit control panel, metal structures of the reactor compartment, the condenser cooling system, the engineering building, transport corridor equipment and much more. They say that copper cable and nickel silver pipes were transported from the construction site in whole trainloads.
In the reactor hall, the cylindrical reactor shaft is dark. Everything that was possible in the mine was cut off long ago, and its bottom is littered with debris. Even the handrails used to inspect the mine were stolen. Above is a containment shell made of reinforced concrete.
The containment, designed to prevent the release of radioactive substances into the environment during severe reactor accidents, is made highly durable. The “miners” were unable to cope with the reinforced concrete structure, and were forced to be content with reinforcement extracted from thin slabs. The method is simple: several slabs are lifted higher by a surviving crane and dropped onto a monolithic platform. The concrete slabs are shattered into pieces, and the remaining reinforcement is sold as scrap metal.
To pull metal out of finished engineering structures, they use an even simpler method - they crush everything with bulldozer buckets.
Dark stairs lead to the platform where the main circulation pump snail lies. Judging by the cut of the thick-walled stainless steel pipe, an attempt was made to divide the device into parts, but this task was beyond the power of the carvers. Nearby there is another snail of the same kind, which they no longer tried to cut.
Rising higher, you can see the foundation of the second power unit of the KNPP. A lot of public funds were also spent on its creation, satisfying all the requirements for strength and seismic resistance. Now no one needs him.
From 1995 to 1999, the electronic and club music festival “Republic KaZantip” was held every summer on the territory of KNPP. Thousands of young people gathered on the beaches of the Azov Sea, and parties and discos were held in the turbine hall of the first power unit. The advertising slogan read: “Atomic party in a reactor.” Windsurfing and kitesurfing competitions are held annually nearby. The same place served as the set for many feature films, the most famous of which today is “Inhabited Island” by Fyodor Bondarchuk.
Over the past years, no one has found a use for the tens of thousands of people who were left to vegetate and survive on the deserted Azov coast. In the late 1980s, up to 30 thousand people lived in Shchelkino, and today no more than 7 thousand. Of the 5.5 thousand apartments, 2.5 thousand are empty.
There are no street names in Shchelkino. Only house numbers, of which there are about a hundred. There was no street lighting or heating here for a long time, and the garbage chutes in the houses were welded shut a long time ago. The city does not have money to solve these problems. Life here is in full swing only in the summer, as local residents switch to providing recreation for visitors. In winter, Shchelkino turns into a ghost town. At the same time, the city does not leave any unpleasant feelings; people, despite the problems they have to deal with every day, remain cordially and willingly tell stories about the once “all-Union Komsomol” construction project, although these stories are not very funny.
The sea is 200 m from the city limits. Cape Kazantip is seven minutes away by car. There are dacha plots around Shchelkino: those who managed to build during the construction of the KNPP have quite good buildings; those who received plots later have nothing at all (at best, toilets made from elevator blocks).
The city's prospects are dim. Perhaps the only direction available at the moment is the development of Shchelkino as a resort region and providing conditions for tourists to relax.
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The first design surveys were carried out in 1968. Construction began in 1975. The station was supposed to provide electricity to the entire Crimean peninsula, as well as create a foundation for the subsequent development of industry in the region - metallurgical, mechanical engineering, chemical. Design capacity is 2000 MW (2 power units) with the possibility of subsequent increase to 4000 MW: the standard design provides for the placement of 4 power units with VVER-1000/320 reactors on the station site.
After the construction of a satellite city, a reservoir embankment and auxiliary farms, construction of the station itself began in 1982. A temporary line was laid from the Kerch branch of the railway, and at the height of construction, two trains of building materials arrived along it per day. In general, construction proceeded without significant deviations from the schedule with the planned launch of the first reactor in 1989.
The unfavorable economic situation in the country and the disaster at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986 led to the fact that by 1987 construction was first suspended, and in 1989 the final decision was made to abandon the launch of the station. By this time, 500 million Soviet rubles in 1984 prices had been spent on the construction of the nuclear power plant. Approximately another 250 million rubles worth of materials remained in the warehouses. The station began to be slowly torn apart for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal.
No fuel was imported and does not pose a radiation hazard.
Prospects for using the nuclear power plant site and developing a satellite city
In 2006, the territory of the former nuclear power plant was selected as one of the possible sites for creating a pilot project for an industrial park. In 2008, preparatory work began on the implementation of the Shchelkinsky Industrial Park industrial park project; the city council transferred ownership of some of the objects located on this land plot to the Shchelkinsky Industrial Park.
- The Crimean nuclear power plant was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most expensive nuclear reactor. This is due to the fact that, unlike the Tatar NPP and the Bashkir NPP of the same type, which were stopped at the same time, it had a higher degree of readiness at the time construction was stopped.
- A solar power plant was built nearby. Near it, on the eastern part of the shore of the Aktash reservoir, there is also an experimental wind power plant YuzhEnergo, consisting of 15 wind turbines with a capacity of 100 kW each. Not far from it there are 8 old non-working experimental wind turbines of the East Crimean Wind Power Plant, installed back in Soviet times.
- A little-known fact: the station has an almost complete twin - the abandoned, unfinished Stendal nuclear power plant (German) 100 km west of the city, which was built according to the same Soviet project from 1982 to 1990. By the time construction stopped, the readiness of the first power unit was 85%. Its only significant difference from the Crimean NPP is the use of cooling towers for cooling, rather than a reservoir. Currently, the Stendal nuclear power plant (2009) is almost completely dismantled. A pulp and paper mill now operates on the territory of the former station; the cooling towers were dismantled in 1994 and 1999. With the help of excavators and heavy construction equipment, the dismantling of the reactor shops is being completed.
- The Crimean Nuclear Power Plant is mentioned in the song of the punk rock group “Cockroaches!” “Who will sleep with me now?”: