Abandoned nuclear power plant Crimea. The Crimean nuclear power plant in Shchelkino is the most expensive unfinished nuclear reactor in the world. tons of steam per hour

During one of my regular trips, I decided to visit the unfinished Crimean nuclear power plant, located not far from Shchelkino. In general, I am a fan of non-standard solutions, besides, I myself work at a nuclear power plant. Therefore, it was very interesting for me to see the object, which could become one of the most significant in the Crimea.

Location, history

The Crimean NPP facility, which has not become significant for the entire peninsula, and maybe the whole country, is located in the immediate vicinity of the village of Shchelkino and a local attraction -. The development of a very expensive project in those days began back in 1968. The construction itself was launched seven years later - in 1975. Already in the eighty-fourth year, the object was considered a "shock construction site".

And there were good reasons for that, because its design capacity was supposed to take place between the Balakovo and Khmelnitsky nuclear power plants. The calculation was carried out for 2 GW. It was in those days that Shchelkino was called a "satellite city", unfortunately, today it looks like an ordinary village.

At the construction site, for the first time, a circular bridge assembly, the so-called "Polar Crane", was used in the process. They immediately used the first solar station SES-5 in the Soviet Union. Eleven years later, the facility was 80 percent ready, but a tragedy occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986). All work was temporarily stopped, and three years later the construction site was closed altogether.

There are different opinions as to why this happened, one of the versions is the Chernobyl accident. According to another version, there were serious problems with the input of the object. You can argue on this topic for a very long time, but it's all useless. The fact remains that the construction was never completed. And they decided to sell the object, but even then something went wrong.

What attracts tourists to the unfinished nuclear power plant

This place is interesting for young people, especially the turbine department. It was in it that the founders of the "Kazantip Republic" for three years, from 1996 to 1999, held their famous parties with the loud name "Atomic Party in the Reactor". After the unfinished station, various extreme clubs began to operate. They offered all thrill-seekers jumping from a small height (base jumping).

By the way, if you watched Fyodor Bondarchuk's film "Inhabited Island", you will immediately see familiar landscapes. After all, he shot many shots here. And Bondarchuk is not the only one; you can see the silhouette of the power unit that went into operation in other films.

In addition, walks here are absolutely safe for human health, since the raw materials, although they were brought to Shchelkino, did not manage to be placed at the station. Today, the recycling of structures is in full swing here. The Ministry of Energy of Russia plans to create an entire industrial park on the site of the unfinished Crimean NPP. So it is quite possible that these edges will become real. The unfinished nuclear power plant is more to the liking of lovers of gloomy, gloomy landscapes. It was interesting to me as an employee, exactly the same nuclear power plant. The entrance is free.

How to get (get) to the Crimean nuclear power plant

The easiest way to get here is with your own car. Exact coordinates and map at the bottom of the page. Go towards the village of Shchelkino, from the village of Semenovka, the garden society "Vishnya-96" keep the way to the Aktash lake (reservoir). Its shore is the end point of the path. By the way, if you don’t have your own transport, you can do it without problems.

A photo

Exact location on the map, GPS coordinates: 45°23’30.0″N 35°48’12.0″E (45.391673, 35.803341)

That's about this, not quite the usual place, I wanted to write today. If you want to personally see the remains of the nuclear power plant that was built on the Crimean Peninsula, I recommend not to waste time. Carefully prepare for the trip and find a place to stay. Moreover, housing in the Crimea today it is possible to book online not only quickly, but also profitably. Thus, providing yourself with an interesting, useful and comfortable stay.

The first design surveys were carried out in 1968. Construction started in 1975. The station was supposed to provide electricity to the entire Crimean peninsula, as well as create a reserve for the subsequent development of the region's industry - metallurgical, machine-building, chemical. The design capacity is 2000 MW (2 power units) with the possibility of a subsequent increase to 4000 MW: the standard design provides for the placement of 4 power units with VVER-1000/320 reactors at the plant site.

After the construction of the satellite city, the embankment of the reservoir and auxiliary facilities, the 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 echelons of building materials per day arrived along it. In general, construction proceeded without significant deviations from the schedule with the planned start-up of the first reactor in 1989.

The unfavorable economic situation in the country and the catastrophe 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 a 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 pulled apart for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal.

Fuel was not imported, it does not pose a radiation hazard.

Prospects for the use of the NPP site and the development of the satellite city

In 2006, the territory of the former nuclear power plant was chosen as one of the possible sites for the creation of a pilot industrial park project. In 2008, preparatory work began on the implementation of the Shchelkinsky Industrial Park industrial park project, the city council transferred part of the facilities located on this land plot to the ownership of the Shchelkinsky Industrial Park.

• The Crimean NPP was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive nuclear reactor in the world. This is due to the fact that, unlike the Tatarskaya NPP and the Bashkirskaya NPP of the same type that were shut down at the same time, it had a higher degree of readiness at the time the 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 windmills 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 a, which was built according to the same Soviet project from 1982 to 1990. By the time the construction was 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, and not reservoirs. At present, the Stendal nuclear power plant (2009) has already been 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 disassembly of the reactor shops is being completed.

• The Crimean NPP is mentioned in the song of the punk rock band "Cockroaches!" Who will sleep with me now?

The southern sun and the shallow sea took her from me. The dead reactor and the room in the share took it from me. Port wine and a dude from a rock band took it from me. Dumb girlfriends and DJ loops took it from me.

[:RU]I will start my story about Crimea with an unfinished nuclear power plant, which is located near the city of Kerch. It was this nuclear power plant that could play an important role in the life of the entire Crimean peninsula and become a cheap source of energy for future industries that were planned to be located on the peninsula. Alas, now the nuclear power plant has become just a good source of metal, and, most likely, already for foreign manufacturers.

By chance, I met a man who took an active part in the construction of the station. I forgot to ask his name, his story was so interesting, but I managed to make his photo portrait.

Crimean NPP

“Like after the war, but there was such beauty,” the elderly man said this phrase several times during our conversation. They planned to turn Crimea into a paradise for tourists, and provide local residents with jobs in new industries. From the city of Kerch, they planned to launch trolleybuses right up to Sevastopol itself (now such buses run between Yalta and the nearest villages). For the implementation of all these plans, a sufficient amount of electricity was needed. In 1975, they began to build a nuclear power plant, having previously prepared the satellite town of Shchelkino.

Crimean NPP

By the way, the construction was completed, they even managed to start the reactor, and a polar crane was installed in the building for the installation of heavy equipment. The launch of the station was scheduled for 1989, but ... The 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant left its mark. Only this imprint was imposed not so much on nuclear energy, but on the already undermined economic situation in the country. Here a huge “thank you” must be said to Mikhail Sergeyevich, who received the Nobel Prize for the collapse of the country and now lives happily behind the cordon.

Crimean NPP

Further, the history of the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world went downhill. From 1995 to 1999, the festival "Republic of Kazantip" was held on the territory of the nuclear power plant. Then the East Crimean Energy Company began to sell off the equipment of the power plant. It is not clear why the company was called "Energy Company".

They would be honestly called - "Company for the sale of metal left by the Soviet Union." The remains of the nuclear power plant were transferred to the Council of Ministers of Crimea and, it seems, should be sold in order to invest money in the city of Shchelkino. But the signs with the inscription "private property" make you wonder if a private owner needs to invest in the city of Shchelkino?

Also, during the construction, a unique tower crane was used, one of the largest in the world, with a lifting capacity of 240 tons. It stood until the mid-2000s, after which it was sold for scrap. In the photo, this is the tallest crane. By the way, please note that the engine block attached to the reactor block was built in structures, but at present it is completely destroyed.

And this is already a real steam generator: They did not have time to deliver them to the Crimean nuclear power plant, as well as the reactor. They were brought and laid on the grass.

So they lay there until 2005, when two people came with autogen and turned the reactor into scrap metal in a few days.

In 2005, the reactor was sawn up with autogen, then taken to ferrous metal. From the control rooms, all equipment was also taken out and handed over to ferrous metal. It seems that in a couple of years there will be nothing left of the station at all.

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 the construction was 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, and not reservoirs.
The place where the reactor was to be installed.

Currently, this type of reactor is the most common in its series - 31 operating reactors (out of 54 VVERs), which is 7.1% of the total number of power reactors of all types in operation in the world.
The entrance to the hermetic zone - the hermetic door is long gone.

If someone is going to go there, be sure to take a flashlight and look under your feet, there are a lot of through technical holes in the floor.

Technical openings for cables and communications. The equipment used to be here.

A crane is used for dismantling, and earlier, for construction, another crane was installed - a polar one. It was one of the tallest cranes in the world with a lifting capacity of 240 tons, it was almost 2 times taller than the crane in the photo. The crane was dismantled and sold for use.

In early 2005, the Representative Office of the Crimean Property Fund sold the reactor department of the Crimean NPP for UAH 1.1 million ($207,000) to an undisclosed legal entity. Now the station is continuously working on the dismantling and removal of parts of the block for ferrous metal.

The Crimean NPP was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive nuclear reactor in the world.

From 1995 to 1999, discos of the Republic of KaZantip festival were held in the turbine department. The advertisement read: "Nuclear party in the reactor."

It was planned to use the Aktash reservoir as a cooling pond, on the bank of which the station was built.

The station was supposed to have 2 VVER-1000 reactors with a nominal power of 1000 MW each.

Railway lock, designed primarily to replace nuclear fuel at nuclear power plants.

We look up from the gateway. A large crane is visible, which once knew how to move in a circle and lift everything up to the reactor itself.

A place for a reactor, which was never brought here.

Some kind of mobile transformer, apparently.

Pit reactor.

Upward view. Visible faucet and stainless steel walls

One of several boilers of unknown purpose, most likely part of the reactor cooling system.

Again stainless steel.

Spray pools.

Crimean NPP

Crimean NPP

Crimean NPP

Crimean NPP

Crimean NPP

Crimean NPP

Crimean NPP

On the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov in the Crimea, 75 kilometers west of Kerch, there is a rather popular resort town of Shchelkino. Vacationers appreciate it for its good ecology, spacious beaches and ideal conditions for families with children. One of the main Crimean centers for surfing and paragliding is located in Shchelkino. Near the village is the legendary Cape Kazantip. This, perhaps, is all that this small town in the northeast of the Crimean peninsula is known for.

However, there is another interesting object in Shchelkino, which usually passes by the attention of most ordinary tourists. We are talking about the unfinished and abandoned Crimean nuclear power plant - one of the most curious and mysterious places on the peninsula.

Not all vacationers who come to Shchelkino know that this Azov resort owes its appearance to the Crimean nuclear power plant. Initially, Shchelkino was built as a satellite city of the nuclear power plant and its main population was planned to be made up of the station personnel. The name was also chosen taking into account its main purpose - the city was named after the famous nuclear physicist Kirill Shchelkin.

However, fate decreed otherwise and today's Shchelkino is a small town whose inhabitants live mainly on income from the resort business. But first things first…

In our today's article, we will talk about the history of the construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant in Shchelkino, and also talk about the prospects for the resumption of the nuclear power industry on the peninsula.

The idea to build a nuclear power plant in Crimea originated in the political and scientific circles of the Soviet Union in the postwar years. One of the reasons was the notorious resource scarcity of the Crimean peninsula. The appearance of a nuclear power plant in Crimea would close the problem of energy supply to the region once and for all.

The development of the project of the Crimean NPP began in the late 60s, and already in 1975 the construction of the station and the satellite town started directly.

The construction of the Crimean NPP was carried out in the traditional for the USSR style of "all-Union construction". A lot of engineers, nuclear physicists and builders came from all over the country to the Azov coast of Crimea. The station in Shchelkino was built according to a standard, already run-in project. Similar nuclear power plants have already been built in Khmelnitsky, Volgodonsk and the Czech Republic.

Initially, it was planned that two power units with a capacity of 1 GW each would be built at the Shchelkino nuclear power plant, despite the fact that the maximum demand for electricity in Crimea is approximately 1200 MW. However, already in the process of construction, the project was expanded to four power units with a capacity of 1 GW each. You may ask why so many, because, as we have already mentioned, even one power unit per 1 GW would be quite enough for Crimea. However, the plans of the builders of the nuclear power plant were not limited only to the power supply of the peninsula. So, with the help of the second power unit, it was planned to provide Feodosia and Kerch with hot water. The third power unit was supposed to work for the desalination of sea water on an industrial scale in order to save the Crimea from the shortage of fresh water. And finally, the fourth power unit was supposed to work "for export", supplying electricity to the Krasnodar Territory and the Caucasus.

Before proceeding with the construction of the station, a satellite city was built in the immediate vicinity of it, which received the name Shchelkino. The main construction of the city was completed in 1978. Since that time, the city began to be actively populated. The main backbone of its inhabitants were visitors, while the real intellectual elite of the country came to Shchelkino for permanent residence.

The construction of the nuclear power plant itself began in 1982 - during the relatively prosperous times of the Brezhnev stagnation.

For the needs of a grandiose construction project, a railway line was extended from the Kerch branch towards Shchelkino, along which trains loaded with building materials soon went. By 1987, the main work was completed, and in 1989, the first power unit was already scheduled to start the reactor.

However, the political and economic crisis that began in the country, which led to the fall of the Soviet empire, intervened in the plans of the nuclear scientists. However, the collapse of the USSR was far from being the main reason for stopping construction. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant played a key role in the closure of the Shchelkino NPP project.

At the very moment when the construction of the Crimean NPP had already reached the finishing stage, Chernobyl struck. The terrible tragedy that broke out in the Kyiv region greatly frightened the world community. Nuclear power and everything connected with it suddenly became the object of the closest attention. On this wave, an active campaign began in the Crimea against the further construction of a nuclear power plant in Shchelkino. One of the arguments of the activists of this campaign was the fact that the Crimea is a seismic zone and in the event of an earthquake, a nuclear monster enclosed in reactors could get out of control.

However, many experts believe that the hysteria inflated around this topic had no serious grounds, since the Crimean and Chernobyl nuclear power plants were fundamentally different, both in the type of reactors used and in the system of protection against emergency situations. Many nuclear engineers have argued and continue to argue that the Crimean NPP reactors were extremely reliable and safe to use in terms of design.

However, single voices in defense of the station were drowned in the general chorus of opponents of the construction of the Crimean NPP. Under pressure from the public and circumstances, in 1987 all work on the construction of the station was stopped, despite the fact that by that time the first power unit of the nuclear power plant was almost 80% ready. At the time construction was stopped, building materials worth 250 million Soviet rubles were still stored in warehouses in the Shelkino area. A huge amount for those times!

Most of all, the decision to mothball the construction site was disappointed by the residents of the city of Shchelkino. After all, the refusal to continue building the station for many of them meant the collapse of plans and hopes associated with further work. When it became obvious that the project of the Crimean nuclear power plant was finally buried, many people packed their things and left Shchelkino, where, apart from the failed nuclear power plant, there was no production.

However, despite the decision of part of the population to leave Shchelkino, a significant part of the inhabitants remained. The city was saved ... by the sea. Or rather, the fact that Shchelkino is located in a fairly good place on the Azov coast. If not for this factor, Shchelkino, with a high degree of probability, would have turned into a ghost town.

However, despite its "resort status", Shchelkino, by and large, is a depressive city with very vague prospects. The population of the city has decreased from 25 thousand to 11 and continues to decrease.

After the construction stopped, the failed nuclear power plant began to gradually fall into disrepair and be plundered. The amount of material resources invested in the Crimean NPP turned out to be so huge that the most valuable components were sold and taken away until recently. All the most "delicious" was sold for a lot of money, and local residents and visiting guest performers pilfered the station in detail. The reactor, which was cut into scrap metal in 2005, did not escape the sad fate.

The very territory of the failed nuclear power plant was chosen by active youth. So, in the 90s, discos of the famous Kazantip rave festival were held in the turbine department of the station. And from the high booms of the Danish Kroll crane, which was bought for the installation of a nuclear reactor, base jumpers regularly jumped.

The unfinished Crimean nuclear power plant managed to visit the role of a cinematic platform. Episodes of several films were filmed here, the most famous of which was Fyodor Bondarchuk's painting "Inhabited Island".

Today, the territory of the nuclear power plant and its interior are quite suitable for filming films based on the plot of the famous computer game "Half Life".

By the way, the territory of the unfinished nuclear power plant in Shchelkino is open to the public, and therefore, if you are a fan of non-traditional tourist routes, then you will be very interested here. But be careful and extremely attentive - an unfinished man-made object is fraught with many dangers.

By the way, contrary to numerous rumors, the Crimean NPP does not pose a radiation hazard, since nuclear fuel was not imported here.

As for the prospects for resuming the construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant in Shchelkino, they still remain very vague. Relatively recently, Rosatom has indicated its interest in this topic and even held consultations. However, to date, no decisions have been made regarding the revival of the project for the construction of the Crimean NPP and, in all likelihood, will not be made any more, due to economic feasibility. According to experts, it is easier and cheaper to build a new station than to try to restore the destroyed and plundered nuclear power plant in Shchelkino.

An interesting fact: the Crimean NPP has a twin station. This is the unfinished Stendal nuclear power plant, located west of Berlin in Germany. From 1982 to 1990 it was built in the GDR on a similar project. Like the nuclear power plant in Shchelkino, its German "sister" was also 85% ready.

That's all, enjoy your holiday in the Crimea!

In the 1970s, a large-scale program for the construction of nuclear power plants of various types was developed in the Soviet Union. By the end of the next decade, the European part of the country's territory was to be covered with a new dense nuclear network. The tragedy that happened on April 26, 1986, near the Chernobyl regional center in the Kyiv region, put an end to these plans. Only about half of the grandiose energy projects that began at that time were completed in one form or another (they include, for example, the Minsk CHPP-5, which we talked about a month ago). The remaining "shock communist construction projects" were abandoned forever, becoming an atmospheric monument to the collapse of the USSR and its ambitions. "Ghost nuclear power plants" of the Soviet Union (and not only) - in the review of Onliner.by.

The 1970s were a successful decade for the main country of the socialist camp. High oil and gas prices, a period of relative thaw in relations with the United States and Western Europe, known as "détente", which made it possible to reduce spending on the defense industry, helped the Soviet Union to implement many ambitious industrial projects. The reverse effect of the rapid development of heavy and energy-intensive industry was the prospect of a shortage of electricity in the country. Power plants operating on traditional fuels, the most powerful hydroelectric power plants of the 1950s-1970s, and the first generation of nuclear power plants could no longer satisfy the increasingly ambitious plans of the Soviet leadership. This problem was to be largely solved with the help of a new network of nuclear power plants, the construction of which began at the turn of the 1970-1980s with the prospect of putting the first stages into operation a decade later.

Almost all nuclear power plants were to be implemented according to a standard scheme that provided for the construction of stations with two, four or six power units with VVER-1000 reactors, the latest development of Soviet nuclear scientists by that time (by the way, another type of reactor exploded at the infamous Chernobyl - RBMK). The first VVER-1000 was launched in 1980 at the Novovoronezh NPP, then over the next five years, about a dozen more similar reactors were put into operation, mainly on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR: the Kalinin, Balakovo, Zaporizhzhya, Rovno, South Ukrainian NPPs were put into operation.

But the main thing was ahead. The plans included the construction of nuclear power plants in Bashkiria and Tatarstan, in the Crimea and near Kostroma, in the Southern Urals and in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine. Nuclear combined heat and power plants (ATES) and nuclear heat supply stations (AST) were supposed to start heating Minsk and Odessa, Kharkov and Gorky. In varying degrees, work began on each of these facilities, and all of them (with the exception of the Minsk APEC) fell victim to the Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent systemic crisis of the Soviet economy and the collapse of the USSR. Energy complexes remained unfinished, and satellite cities, which were always built first, ended up without their city-forming enterprise.

Crimean NPP (Schelkino, Crimea)

The failed power plant in Crimea is probably the most famous nuclear “abandonment” of the former USSR. Firstly, the degree of readiness of its first power unit at the time of the suspension of construction was 80%, which means that the main work was nearing completion, the complex was acquiring a finished look. Secondly, the very location of the station in a resort area, next to the Sea of ​​Azov, contributed to the popularity of the facility among visitors.

The construction of the Crimean NPP began at the very end of the 1970s. As usual, the creation of the necessary infrastructure was accompanied by the construction of an atomograd, which first housed the builders of the complex, later replaced by power engineers. So the city of Shchelkino appeared on the map of the peninsula, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist Kirill Shchelkin. In 1981, work began on two power units, the first stage of the station. In 1987, after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, they were suspended, and two years later they were completely abandoned. At the same time, the readiness of the first power unit was about 80%, the second - 18%. Even in the conditions of a difficult economic situation in the country, at least the first unit of the nuclear power plant could be completed quite easily, as happened, for example, at the South Ukrainian or Zaporozhye nuclear power plants, where the construction of the next VVER-1000 was completed at the very end of the 1980s.

Instead, the already mastered fantastic money was literally buried in the ground. The progressive public, focusing on the resort essence of the region and the earthquakes observed there periodically, has achieved a halt in construction. Crimea never received energy independence, and the almost completely finished first power unit began to be plundered. The equipment and facilities of the complex were sold for next to nothing or cut into scrap metal.

For example, in 2003, a unique double-tower self-propelled crane K-10000 set off in an unknown direction. The Danish company Kroll Kranes built only 15 of these engineering masterpieces with a carrying capacity of 240 tons, and 13 of them were bought by the Soviet Union just for the new nuclear project. Of all of them, only two K-10000s are now preserved in the territory of the former USSR: one in Russia and one in Ukraine. The rest either work for new owners, mainly in eastern countries, or have disappeared without a trace.

But the Crimean nuclear power plant has become an object of worship for lovers of abandoned architecture and electronic music. In the 1990s, discos of the Kazantip Republic festival were held right in the turbine hall of the unfinished first power unit. Now this building continues to slowly collapse - on its own and with human help. Of course, there can be no talk of any completion of the station.

Tatarskaya NPP (Kamskiye Polyany, Tatarstan)

The rest of the abandoned nuclear construction projects of the former Soviet Union are in a much lesser degree of completion. In the early 1980s, the construction of a nuclear power plant began in Tatarstan, which was supposed to become an energy donor for large republican industrial giants commissioned in the previous decade. By April 1990, when work on the site ceased, a settlement of future power engineers had grown up 50 kilometers from the city of Nizhnekamsk, which received the romantic name Kamskiye Polyany. The first two (out of four planned) units with VVER-1000 reactors were at the stage of construction of turbine rooms and reactor rooms.

A number of auxiliary facilities of the station infrastructure and a start-up boiler room, designed to start the first reactor, were ready. Similar facilities were built in the first place and are present at many ghost nuclear power plants.

Unlike the nuclear power plant at Kazantip, local authorities continue to harbor hopes for the completion of the station. At the same time, it is obvious that almost everything already built in the 1980s (except perhaps the boiler house) is useless during the resuscitation of the project. The inevitable degradation of the “unfinished” in the absence of proper conservation, its barbaric operation with partial dismantling will only allow, if desired, to use the prepared site and the fate of the inhabitants of Kamsky Polyany, languishing from difficult ups and downs.

Bashkir NPP (Agidel, Bashkortostan)

Just 400 kilometers from the TatNPP, approximately in the same years, the construction of a nuclear power plant in neighboring Bashkiria was going on. Over a decade, about $800 million in modern equivalent was spent on a project being built on a similar Crimean and Tatar nuclear power plant (2 + 2 power units with VVER-1000 reactors). But here they managed to do even less than in Kamskiye Polyany.

Only the first power unit was at the stage of construction of the reactor hall and engine room. Under the rest of the "atomic" part of the complex, only foundation pits were ready. The funds were mainly spent on the infrastructure part (construction base, auxiliary workshops, administrative premises, start-up boiler house) and the satellite village of Agidel.

Kostroma NPP (Chistye Bory, Kostroma Region)

Approximately the same degree of readiness (the town of power engineers, which received the name Chistye Bory here, a boiler house, a number of auxiliary infrastructure facilities and power units at the initial stage of construction) is now at the Kostroma NPP, whose task was to provide electricity to the Moscow region and the Kostroma region.

The main feature of this plant was that, unlike all other new nuclear power plants of the 1980s, it was planned to use not VVER-1000, but RBMK-1500, the next generation of the series, installed, in particular, in Chernobyl. In the late 2000s, plans were announced to continue construction (already with a return to more reliable VVER), but the economic situation in Russia and a number of new projects already launched by Rosenergoatom again made the future of the station near Kostroma and its satellite village ghostly.

Chigirinskaya NPP (Orbita, Ukraine)

The nuclear power plant in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine was originally started to be built as a large, but quite traditional state district power plant in the early 1970s. The project, however, was difficult to implement, with a number of changes, the last of which was the most dramatic. In 1982, instead of a state district power plant, it was decided to build a nuclear power plant on the same site according to a standard scheme with four power units. In this case, the work stopped at the very first stage - during the construction of a satellite town and a start-up boiler house.

Before the Chernobyl disaster, the builders managed to finish the boxes of the first dormitories, a nine-story residential building and a number of public buildings, such as a department store. As such, the energy complex did not have time to start. As a result, in the Cherkassy steppes on the banks of the Dnieper, to the delight of the homeless, young people from the neighboring city and visiting "stalkers", a ghost village appeared with the proud name of Orbita, in which only two five-story buildings are inhabited. About 60 families live there.

Kharkiv ATES (Borki, Ukraine)

In addition to traditional nuclear power plants, primarily designed to generate electricity, the same energy program of the USSR in the 1970s provided for the construction of nuclear power plants of a different type in the European part of the country. In particular, the construction of ATES was started - nuclear thermal power plants capable of generating, in addition to electrical, and thermal energy, which could be directed to heating a neighboring large city. In the village of Borki near Kharkov, only a few residential buildings were built.

Odessa APEC (Teplodar, Ukraine)

Odessa analogue was lucky (or maybe not) a little more. The satellite city of Teplodar was fully built, having managed to complete the same ubiquitous start-up boiler room. The matter never came to the construction of power units, and as a result, the boiler house, necessary for starting up the first reactor, does not at all do what was intended by the design engineers, Teplodar heats.

Against the background of its Ukrainian sisters, the fate of the Minsk APEC, which was converted into an ordinary thermal power plant and completed in this form already in the years of independence, looks even more or less enviable.

Voronezh and Gorkovskaya AST (Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod, Russia)

The third type in this program, along with nuclear power plants and nuclear power plants, was nuclear heat supply stations, in fact, "nuclear boiler houses", which generated only thermal energy for the same supply of large cities. In the 1980s, they managed to almost completely build two such stations: near Voronezh and modern Nizhny Novgorod, but even here, due to the economic crisis and protests of the local population, things did not come to completion.