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.
The Crimean NPP is the most expensive unfinished nuclear reactor in the world. For the sake of servicing the power plant on the Kerch Peninsula, a whole city was erected - Shchelkino. An associated infrastructure was created. Specialists from all over the Soviet Union were invited. Less than a year was not enough to start the reactor, then Crimea would be able to provide itself with electricity on its own.There is little left of the Crimean nuclear power plant now. A vast area of abandoned and dilapidated buildings. 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 out. The nuclear reactor, the lining of the mine and the control panel of the nuclear power plant were cut into non-ferrous metal. And if precious metals and equipment were taken away in the first place, today you can profit only from iron in concrete slabs.
A hundred meters from the reactor shop, several people in uniforms are monotonously dismantling another building. The tractor destroys the wall, the crane carries the concrete slab to the ground, where it is smashed by workers. They want to get to the rebar hidden inside. From the concrete shop, only the foundation and a pile of stone chips remained. The further fate of the still surviving buildings frightens with its predictability.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The huge gray box of the reactor shop dominates the territory of the facility. The workshop, as high as two nine-story buildings and over 70 meters wide, was built on a six-meter foundation. You can enter it through a huge round hole. The metal door, half a meter thick, was dragged away long ago. There is no radiation danger, since they did not have time to deliver nuclear fuel. Entrance is free, there is no security.
The building contains 1,300 rooms, box-rooms for various purposes and, accordingly, sizes. Inside the boxes is empty and dusty. Pieces of wires are hanging somewhere, garbage is lying around. Light does not penetrate into the reactor shop at all. The heavy silence, the belated echo of footsteps and the closed space of the rooms thicken the atmosphere. Being here is unsettling. Random noises are annoying. Nevertheless, you are not in a hurry to leave the reactor. It can be summed up in one phrase: "Terrifyingly interesting."
“In Crimea, everything was done slowly”
Toropov Vitaly, head of the reactor shop:- Scientists and specialists have been working on the project of the Crimean nuclear power plant since 1968. In 1975, a satellite city was laid - Shchelkino, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist Kirill Shchelkin. This is a settlement in which nuclear scientists and their families were supposed to live. When in June 1981 I arrived in the Leninsky district, at the site of the future station, one might say, wheat was still earing and they were just beginning to dig a foundation pit. I was sent here from the Kola NPP. Indeed, in Soviet times, as it was: after studying at the university, you start from the lowest positions, then you rise higher. No one would immediately appoint me the head of the shop.
According to the plan, the power plant was to operate in four years and ten months. But the management was recruited in advance: senior engineers and heads of the four main workshops. Such was the rule. They had to control the receipt of documentation, equipment, monitor the progress of construction and installation work, and gradually recruit personnel. The salary during this period was paid, of course, small.
It was important for me to understand the geography of the workshop. When the reactor is operating, you have a few seconds not to receive a lethal dose of radiation. You need to act instantly, to know exactly where which valve is located. Even in the blackout mode, you have to be able to feel like a divers.
In 1986, the reactor was supposed to be launched, but due to the slow pace of construction, they did not have time. I attribute this to the specifics of the Crimea. Here everything was done slowly. For example, in a year they managed to build one kindergarten. And there seemed to be money, but the party had doubts and some party members were against it. And then it exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the construction stalled. There was a wave of discontent. 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 nuclear power plant in Juragua. When I returned, the station had already been closed and torn apart. It was about 90% complete. Less than a year left for installation and commissioning. If they had time to launch, the station would not have been closed. In addition, equipment for two more units was stored in warehouses. Moreover, the equipment is high-quality, with imported parts. If Vladimir Tansky, the director of the Crimean NPP, took the situation under control and kept the course of events, nothing would be stolen. It was necessary to wait until the hype with Chernobyl subsides, becomes less flashy.
We planned to build four reactor blocks, each of them would generate one million megawatts. One million was enough for Crimea, so the first block was built in order to refuse the overflow of electricity from the mainland. The second block was needed to provide Feodosia and Kerch with hot water, to rid the peninsula of coal dependence and boiler houses. Through the third block, they wanted to desalinate sea water. The whole world is doing it. We wanted to fill the Crimea with fresh water and not depend on water from the Dnieper. The fourth block is for sale, to the Caucasus, to earn money.
“The Crimean NPP was erroneously compared with Chernobyl”
Anatoly Chehuta, master of instrumentation and automation (KIPiA):- I arrived at the station as soon as they issued a referral: I wanted to get an apartment early. Later it could not be done. My specialization is the maintenance and operation of various control and measuring equipment. Prior to 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, I had an exposure level of 25 roentgens. Five years later, it dropped to 15. Now, probably, there is nothing. Although for a long time the level of 5 roentgens was stable.
One of the problems of the closure of the Crimean nuclear power plant is the general secrecy. There was a lack of publicity. In Soviet times, nothing was disclosed: projects, research, data. When environmentalists raised a wave of indignation in 1986, they did not have official information, so any assumptions could be made. Even the most ridiculous ones. As an example, in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant with a constant southeast wind, radioactive fallout could fall on Foros. Where Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev rested in the summer at the dacha. As a result, a terrible story was blown out of this.
The Crimean nuclear power plant was mistakenly compared with Chernobyl. After all, these are two different types of reactor. In Chernobyl, they used RBMK-1000, in Crimea - VVER-1000. I will not go into details. But it's like heating water over a fire in a saucepan without a lid or a closed thermal dish. The difference is huge.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The reactor did not produce plutonium, but produced steam. The steam turned the turbines, which produced electricity. If in Chernobyl the RBMK was buried nine floors into the ground, then the Crimean VVER was neatly 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, air was sucked out of the room. In an explosion in a vacuum, the pressure was zero. So there could be no disaster. By the way, the building of the reactor shop could withstand a direct collision with a jet aircraft.
The same water-cooled nuclear reactors are used in submarines. The type is the same, only smaller in size. In 1988, there were 350 nuclear submarines in the Soviet Union. And so far there has not been a single accident. From the point of view of physics and design, it is a very reliable device.
Another argument of the opponents of the construction was the lack of exploration of the location of the nuclear power plant. Specifically, seismic. Allegedly, the reactor was built on the site of a tectonic fault, and with small tremors, an accident could occur. But later, in 1989, when independent Italian seismologists arrived, they concluded that at least ten reactors could be built, there was no fault. So, the Soviet experts were right, and the place was chosen well. The reactor itself was built to withstand a magnitude nine earthquake. But it was already late, and the station was closed.
50 tons of steam per hour
Andrey Arzhantsev, head of the heat supply section of the TsTPK:- TsTPK is a workshop for thermal and underground utilities. Under my leadership there was a start-up-reserve boiler room or PRK. If it is easier to explain, then the start-up boiler house is four boilers that produced 50 tons of steam per hour. Due to which hot water and heat were supplied to Shchelkino. Now in the city they have forgotten such words - “hot water”, and earlier it was 75 degrees in the tap.
The main purpose of the PRK is the commissioning of turbines, the heating of the reactor. Without it, not a single nuclear power plant is built. But having completed their task, the boiler house 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. There was nothing like this at that time. The turbines were to be cooled by sea water. We planned to take water from the Aktash reservoir and use it as a cooling pond. Aktash received water from the Sea of Azov. That is, there was an unlimited supply. As a result, nuclear power plants produced environmentally friendly energy.
After the closure of the nuclear power plant, Shchelkino gradually dies out. I think there is no need to explain what happens to the city when it loses its main enterprise. The population decreased from 25 thousand to 11. In terms of intellectual potential, Shchelkino was considered the most developed place in the 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 Shelkino peninsula, it becomes a resort village. What you see now is a tenth of what the city could become. There are no streets here, the houses are simply numbered. Of the attractions - the market, the city council and housing and communal services.
Some nuclear scientists are leaving, others are staying. Those who had somewhere to return left. Throughout the Union, the construction of nuclear power plants is being frozen. There was no work. Here at least the apartment remained. Of course, no one worked in the specialty. I am currently the director of a boarding house.
“Crimea needs a nuclear power plant”
Sergey Varavin, senior turbine control engineer, director of KP Management Company Shchelkinsky Industrial Park:- It is difficult to say who was right and who was to blame then that the Crimean nuclear power plant began to be plundered. The property was redistributed between customers and contractors. About a hundred firms were involved in the construction. Each of them wanted their money back, so the equipment was being sold. In addition, after the collapse of the Union, something was perceived as free, so they dragged what they could. There was no high-profile case on this matter, so there is no need to talk about embezzlement. Now it's no longer clear.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The land was redistributed among the construction participants. Someone refused the plots, someone 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 started in 2007. But due to lack of funding, it was never implemented.
Now the project has been 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, equip the territory, create infrastructure and so on. All that's left is to start building. 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 Writers' Union of Russia:- 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 "Sun Builders". Three chapters are controversial. They are devoted to the 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 then rate, one dollar was equal to 80 kopecks, that is, looked from the bottom up. A lot of money. Therefore, a nuclear power plant is rightfully considered the most expensive unfinished project in the world.
A book about the builders of the sun was published in 1984. I refused to throw out the chapters, for which they stopped publishing me for ten years, they did not allow me to broadcast on the regional television and radio.
There were problems, contractors and nuclear scientists knew about them. Everyone was silent. When I began to dig deeper, to communicate with specialists, I came across such a volume of information that it was impossible not to write about it. It threatened disaster. If they had built the station, even in all respects, there would have been a second Chernobyl.
First, hired workers were hacking. Some norms were not respected, mistakes were made. For example, they mixed up the brand of cement. If you look at buildings today, they are crumbling, concrete is crumbling. And not much time has passed. I saw with my own eyes how they built a "glass" under the reactor. There is no mention 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 the Crimean seismic. We are shaken every year. Tremors are small, but they are. And there is a tectonic fault. It runs from the Feodosia Bay to the Kazantip Bay. Two plates are constantly in contact with each other. While the construction of the power plant was going on, not far from the coast, in the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov, an island appeared and disappeared. A clear confirmation of my argument. It is not clear why seismologists hid such facts.
The third is the cooling of turbines with the help of a reservoir. Let me explain with my fingers. Water enters the station, cools the turbines, returns to Aktash and back to the station. It constantly circulates and gets dirty. To avoid this, they make an exit to the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov. Now the water is constantly updated. But at what cost? Ten years later, Azov turns into an atomic swamp. The Sea of Azov is connected to the Black Sea. So, a little later, he will suffer the same fate. Next up is the Mediterranean. Not to mention evaporation and precipitation. By this time, all Crimeans would have had cancer.
Having learned about everything, I become one of the founders of the environmental movement. I begin to travel with my book in the Crimea. Understand, environmentalists did not inflate the problem from scratch, afraid of Chernobyl. There were claims. There were no answers. We wanted to save the peninsula. Of course, the project was good, the reactor was excellent and modern, but the wrong place was chosen. Of this I am sure.
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 picture is devoted to the problems of the Crimean NPP. There are two opposing points of view in the passage.
This abandoned facility is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive nuclear reactor in the world. which was never built.
The 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 the All-Union Komsomol construction site. In the midst of construction, two (!!!) echelons of building materials were mastered per day.
But in 1987, a famous fur 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 buildings of the USSR today
2. We drive up to the station. Administrative building and observation tower
3. Broken bricks and crumbs of concrete everywhere. In the background - the first power unit and the engineering building
4. Engineering building of the station. Satellite dishes hint that there are people here
5. And here we have the first power unit. There is also a unique giant crane. Only he no longer builds the station, but destroys it.
Here I want to stop a little. The fact is that during the construction of the reactor building of the first power unit, a unique polar crane, the Danish Kroll K-10000, was already installed. With the help of this crane, further lifting and transport and construction and installation operations were to be carried out inside the reactor compartment. It was the tallest crane in Europe. In 2003, the State Property Fund sold it for ... 310 thousand hryvnias with a starting price of 440. Even if it was scrapped, it would have cost more.
Prior to its dismantling, the high-rise 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 estimate its size against the backdrop of a standing "nine".
6. And that's what this station is for today ... A powerful technique that looks like a toy against the background of a concrete monster crumbles its body, extracting metal fittings from there. We will return here, but for now we will 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. Arm-thin metal.
10. There, thick cables go inside the reactor and cutting sounds are heard. There's metal being cut out
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. A bolt found here. Obviously not from a children's designer. I was surprised by the almost complete absence of corrosion for so many years - only an oxidized surface
14. Let's go back to the faucet.
15. Cabin
16. Rollers. Under each pair - a narrow gauge railway
17. Pipes are cut like sausage. Only not on the table, but on the metal
18. One of the pipes was adapted for a change house
19. There are many techniques. She's in demand
20. But this junk has been standing here for a long time
21. Cylinders here are like replaceable batteries in a TV remote control
22. Destroyed external transition from the engineering building to the power unit
23. What remains after the work of "metalworkers"
24. Shock built, shock break
25. It is somewhat reminiscent of the chimneys of stoves in the Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis.
28. Panorama of the site under the engineering building. Everything is cut here
29. Panorama of the metal cutting site
Some information from Wikipedia:
By the time the construction of the station was stopped, 500 million Soviet rubles were spent on the construction of the nuclear power plant in 1984 prices. 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. There is evidence that surveys were carried out in the early 1990s, the purpose of which was to "adjust" additional geological justification for the closure of the Crimean NPP. However, this was only a formal reason - by the end of the 80s, the situation in the economy of the USSR 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 of KaZantip festival were held in the turbine department.
In 1998-2000, the East Crimean Energy Company, a subsidiary established on the basis of the nuclear power plant, sold the station's property for 2.204 million hryvnias. By February 1, 2003, only a special building, a block of workshops, a reactor department and an oil-diesel facility remained on the balance sheet of the Eastern Crimean Energy Company.
In 2004, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine transferred the Crimean NPP from the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy to the Council of Ministers of Crimea. Further, the Crimean Council of Ministers was to sell the received property of the nuclear power plant, and the money was to be used to solve the social and economic problems of the Leninsky district of Crimea, and in particular the city of Shchelkino.
After that, 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 channel with the water intake reservoir, the oil-diesel facilities of the station, diesel generator station. Further, it is known that 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.
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 was filmed in many films, of which the most famous was filmed there in 2007 "Inhabited Island" by F. Bondarchuk
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 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 (2010) 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.
My previous photo essays:
Crimean NPP - the great unfinished
The construction of the Crimean NPP was frozen at a high degree of readiness of the facility ... What is it? A prudent and wise move, the ability to sacrifice a lot to save even more in the future? Or is it a manifestation of flagrant mismanagement and simply a crime against the state, against Crimea and Crimeans?
The issue is all the more relevant now, when the Zaporozhye NPP, 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 top-priority difficult tasks.
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 submit a feasibility study of 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 plants. This proposal was accepted and approved by the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR on July 26, 1977.
The technical design of the Crimean NPP was developed by the Kharkov branch of the Teploelektroproekt Institute of the Glavniiproekt of the USSR Ministry of Energy and Electrification. In September 1978, the project was ready. Then, for two years, its refinement continued, 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 electric capacity of 1000 MW each. This was enough 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. In the future, it was envisaged to place two more power units of 1000 MW each on the territory of the NPP and bring the total capacity of the station up to 4000 MW.
The main equipment of each NPP power unit under the project included: a pressurized water power reactor VVER-1000, four main circulation pumps GTsN-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 appropriate 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 builders of the Crimean NPP was laid out, designed for 20 thousand inhabitants.
It all started with the first high-rise building and a dormitory, then an access road was laid for the village of Lenino - a nuclear power plant construction base, and a post office was built. In subsequent years, the number of apartment buildings constantly increased, the following were built: a school for one and a half thousand students, a kindergarten, the Samarlinskoe reservoir was created to provide drinking and technical water.
The settlement grew rapidly and soon began to look like a small town. In the spring of 1982, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Ukraine, it was given the name Shchelkino, in honor of Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1953 in the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, the first scientific leader and chief designer of the nuclear center Chelyabinsk-70 (Snezhinsk).
The construction of the first block of the Crimean NPP began in 1981. According to the plan, the 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 industrial facilities, and about 100 million rubles were allocated for housing construction, health care, culture and education. The technical and economic indicators of the Crimean NPP corresponded to the advanced technical developments in the world nuclear power industry in the 1970-1980s.
In Shchelkino, intensive construction of houses and roads began; a powerful boiler house was laid. The city was populated by young nuclear specialists (graduates of Kyiv universities) and experienced employees of operating Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Workers, among whom there were many young people, were drawn to the construction site of the station. Valery Anatolyevich Shtogrin was appointed head of construction. The popularity of the object under construction was so great that in 1984 the construction of the Crimean NPP received the status of the All-Union Komsomol shock. 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. 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 power plant.
In the reactor building of the first unit, a unique polar crane was installed at the design site, with the help of which lifting, transport and construction operations were to be carried out inside the reactor compartment. During the construction of the NPP, it was needed for storing equipment (parts of the reactor, 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 on the maintenance of a 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 1:24 a.m., a powerful thermal explosion of the RBMK-1000 channel uranium-graphite nuclear reactor occurred at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In terms of the number of dead and injured 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 history of nuclear energy in the world.
How did the Chernobyl disaster affect the fate of the Crimean NPP? Less than a month had passed since the accident, as articles began to appear in the press about the extreme danger of nuclear energy in general and about the inadmissibility of building the Crimean nuclear power plant in particular. A large number of people took part in the discussion. Ecologists 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 pressurized water reactor VVER-1000, which was to be used at the Crimean NPP (KAES), entered into the dispute.
Rather quickly, the 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 resulting from the shift of tectonic plates at their junctions. It is believed that such zones are the most probable places for earthquakes.
The Crimean peninsula and the entire coast of the Krasnodar Territory are located in a zone where the formation of the relief is still ongoing, so earthquakes here are a common thing. Numerous historical treatises that have survived to this day describe some especially destructive cataclysms on the peninsula.
To get a feel for the tense atmosphere of disputes about the fate of the Crimean NPP in the 1980s, it is enough to turn to the archives of the press. One of the main platforms for controversy was the magazine "Change".
In the article "Crimea: a zone of special risk?", published in No. 21 in 1988, Valery Mitrokhin, a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR, wrote:
In May of this year, an all-Union conference was held in Yalta dedicated to the environmental problems of Crimea. All participants of the meeting were unanimous in their attitude to the construction of a nuclear power plant in the Crimea. Here are just some of the statements of scientists.
M. Ya. Lemeshev, Doctor of Economics, Professor (USSR Academy of Sciences):
- There is a difficult, alarming ecological situation in Crimea. How to fix the situation? In no case should the construction of new industrial enterprises be allowed, no matter how much the apparent benefits justify it. Immediately stop the construction of the nuclear power plant. It affects not only the Crimea, but also the Caucasus, 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 a place for a future nuclear power plant does not stand up to criticism. The station is planted 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 to destroy the fish stocks of the Sea of Azov... In the event of an accident, the likelihood of which is increasing all over the world, the consequences for the small Crimea will be catastrophic. It is known that after the accident in Chernobyl, the design and construction of the Odessa Nuclear Power Plant, Minsk, Chigirinsk, Krasnodar nuclear power plants, the fifth and sixth units of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were stopped. With even greater reason, such a decision should be made in regard to Crimea.
V. M. Lyakhter, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Laureate of the Prize of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (NIIS Hydroproject, Moscow):
- The Crimea has ideal conditions for obtaining energy from the wind. The Kerch Peninsula is very promising, the slopes of the yayla over Yalta, - the “gate of the wind” - Alushta, the vicinity of Sevastopol. Before the war, the world's largest wind power plant successfully operated in Balaklava. In Moscow, a project was developed for a unique installation of five thousand kilowatts. Alas, the authors of these works suffered a hard 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 a thousand kilowatts will make it possible to shut down all the boiler houses in the South Coast. Ten cars will cost four million rubles. Compare with nuclear power plant costs.
In the same year, in addition to the Yalta meeting, many discussions were held at various levels. Scientists, designers, builders of the station took part in them.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Mineral Resources E.P. Tikhonenkov stated that the studies carried out to assess the seismic hazard in the zone of the Crimean NPP do not meet the requirements of the IAEA. The NPP industrial site is located on the most seismically active site. At the stage of preparing a feasibility study, only deep wells were drilled to 15–18 m. Such a depth did not allow tracing the occurrence of inclined limestone layers. Mud volcanism is 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 frosty December 1982 the first cube of concrete was laid with great fanfare in 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 otherwise it 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, work at this facility was carried out with violations of the necessary requirements, the regime of continuous pouring was not maintained, and the concrete itself was not always of the required quality. So it turned out not a monolithic structure, but a layer cake. The performers do not hide this. Moreover, do not hesitate to call a spade a spade. Some believe that an object of this quality will never be accepted for operation, while others say: they say, our job is to complete the amount of work.
And they did it - in the reactor compartment, some units were assembled several times, the pipeline of the low-pressure industrial circuit of the hermetic zone, due to design inconsistencies, was redone within four months.
At the beginning of 1988, about 300 technological pipelines were made with defects. Repair of joints during the installation process was carried out many times - instead of the permissible double. The management of the installation of technical equipment and pipelines of the reactor compartment was entrusted to young specialists who do not have experience in such installation. And yesterday's electric welders worked as masters for welding technological pipelines!
Of particular concern was such a section of the reactor compartment as the Bora tank, which is part of the accident localization system. And here the welding is done no matter. Among other things, the stainless steel sheet for the cladding of the room turned out to be such that, even with visual inspection, about 15 tons of metal were rejected. Other types of control are not provided for by the project ...
The welding of the bottom with the shell is especially bad. Because of the 100% marriage, the station management did not accept the work. In this form, the tanks remained in the monolithic room. The carbon lining - the bottom of the hermetic zone - separating the hermetic part of the reactor compartment from the non-hermetic part, which is part of the accident localization system, was made in winter, in rain and mud, digested many times and was also covered with concrete, despite the prohibitions of V. I. Tansky, the director of the nuclear power plant.
Soil 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, as it were, stands at the top of the pyramid. During an earthquake, the reactor can 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 were no large settlements in the forty-kilometer zone of the nuclear power plant. Say, the largest villages are located only in the south-western direction, towards Feodosia. I counted both settlements and the number of inhabitants. There are about 60 villages and villages in this zone, and over 50 thousand people live in them. Immediately outside the zone (44 km) - 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 Arabatsky and Kazantip bays are a resort area in which boarding houses, rest houses, and pioneer camps are located.
In the area where the nuclear power plant is located, there are reserves: the floodplain of the river Seven Kolodezey, Astana plavni, Cape Kazantip. It is not difficult to guess what awaits them in the near future. Here is a very recent fact. As a result of the flood, the cooling pond of the nuclear power plant (Lake Aktash) overflowed. The dam, washed 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 groundwater is directly connected with Azov. These particles will sooner or later penetrate into the sea. Confirmation of this possibility can be "read" in the feasibility studies.
The article says 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 studies, which make it possible to assert that fault tectonics in the area of construction of the Crimean NPP is widely developed. The fault (North-Aktashsky), having a displacement width of up to 150 m and dipping to the northwest at an angle of 65–80°, passes in the immediate vicinity of the construction site, and movements along it continue at the present time. The area is in zone 7 points. The designs of nuclear power plants are designed for 8–9 points. But with such a low quality of construction, such a margin of safety is a fiction. Warping of NPP structures is possible.
They added fuel to the fire and 25 tremors with a force of four points, which were registered 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 located in the Sea of Azov…
The young foreman of the nuclear power plant, Alexander Lyutkevich, sent a sarcastic response to the article “Crimea: a zone of special risk?” to the editorial office of Smena. He gave a list of headlines from Crimean newspapers before and after May 1988. Before: “Grow, atomic!”, “Nuclear is growing”, “Steps of a large construction site”, “Atom will be peaceful”, “Village full of sun”.
They even printed the following verses:
... I hear a first-grader spelling out:
Lenin, Motherland, progress,
Work, mom, communism, nuclear power plants ...
After: “The resort and the nuclear power plant are incompatible”, “We are strongly against it!”, “Is the goal noble?”.
Later, in September 1989, another voluminous material was published in this magazine under the heading "An Alternative to Krymbas". Its author, Vladimir Animisov, visited the “All-Union Komsomol construction site” and talked with the builders of the Crimean NPP. The journalist was shown the reactor, walked around the power unit, and was told about the protection systems. Vyacheslav Vaiskam, the shift supervisor, became Ned. “Before Chernobyl, there was a principle - give energy at any cost. First of all, plan! - said V. Vaiskam. - Violations were committed at all nuclear power plants. It was enough to stick a piece of cardboard instead of a relay to turn off the protection. Management turned a blind eye to this. If you held the block - well done! And if he turned off the block according to the instructions, he risked getting scolded: “You could pull out the block!” Here, on Krymskaya, such violations are simply technically impossible. Everything is on microprocessors, under a seal.”
The following arguments were also made:
N. P. Bereza, Head of Inspectorate of Gosatomenergonadzor:
- How does the Crimean NPP differ from the Chernobyl one? There there was one barrier between man and fuel, here there are three. In Crimea, a fundamentally different type of reactor is VVER-1000, and 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 council of the NPP labor collective:
- Some kind of mass nihilism has appeared - to close everything, to deny ... Well, we will 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, electricity is also needed.
V. I. Tansky, NPP Director:
- The public demands a referendum on our station. Now it is meaningless, since the opinion is known in advance: “close!”. And I would suggest this option: let's put the first power unit into operation - and then we will stop construction. And the whole million kilowatts will be used for social and cultural life. We will close the boiler houses, transfer transport to electric traction, and give electricity to agriculture. And then we'll have a referendum. I am convinced that even if it shakes 12 points, the entire Crimea will fail, one nuclear power plant will remain unscathed. However, already at five points, the reactor automatically turns off.
Despite their conviction, none of the builders of the nuclear power plant was going to fight to the death for this facility. If the government decided to convert the station into a training center, then that would have happened. But such a center would create new problems: after all, it would also consume energy, and quite a lot, up to 40 MW. This would exacerbate the already large energy deficit in the Crimea.
The article “Alternative to Krymbas” by V. Anisimov is completed by a number of rhetorical questions: “And if 10 points are confirmed and there is no nuclear power plant? This will not remove, but will add problems! Shchelkino, Kerch, Feodosia are not designed for such seismicity. In the heat of controversy, this was somehow forgotten. And now it is 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 the 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 terminated when the first block was 80% ready, and the second - 18%.
On October 25, 1989, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on the conversion of the Crimean NPP under construction into the 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 construction in progress, which was carried out by the State Property Fund of Ukraine and the Property Fund of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
By the time the construction of the Crimean NPP was stopped, about $100 million had been spent on it. Approximately another $50 million worth of materials remained in warehouses.
In 2004, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine transferred the Crimean NPP 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 Shelkino.
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, a supply channel with a water intake reservoir, an oil-diesel facility of the station, a diesel generator station. In early 2005, a representative office of the Crimean Property Fund sold the reactor department of the Crimean NPP for $207,000 to a legal entity whose name was not disclosed.
The most absurd thing in this story with the sale of the reactor compartment was what the new owner did with the acquired reactor vessel - the most complex creation of the mind and hands of many people who worked on its creation. The body 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 NPP was simply lying in the bushes, waiting in the wings. And now the hour has come. By a ruthless hand, it was cut into pieces and scrapped, like a rusty pipe or a waste piece of metal that no one needed.
One can imagine the state of people who escaped from their native places to the Azov steppe to build a nuclear power plant, and then suddenly remained out of work. Shchelkino is a satellite town of the Crimean NPP. What to do in this "satellite" when the station is gone? This is not about a construction team that can move and quickly find a new job. We are talking about 14,000 specialists of various professions, left to the mercy of fate.
After the construction of the nuclear power plant stopped, residential buildings continued to be built in Shchelkino. In 2000, a bus station was built here, and in 2003 a gas boiler house was commissioned ...
The 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 Novootradnoye village, your eyes will be fixed on the sun setting behind the hills of the Kazantip peninsula. The sun quickly, as always in the south, leans towards the earth, and just at the moment when it touches the horizon line, a gigantic silhouette becomes clearly visible against its background, and above it - a thin cross, similar to a cemetery.
This is how a person who went on a summer vacation to Shchelkino before 2003 could write.
The silhouette is the first power unit of the Crimean NPP, a titanic structure made of concrete and metal. Krest is a unique K-10000 crane developed in 1978 by the Danish company Kroll Kranes А/S. Only 15 units of such cranes were produced (13 were purchased by the USSR, 2 cranes were bought by the USA). This double-tower self-propelled full-slewing crane on rails 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.
Prior to dismantling, the high-rise 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 crane "Kroll" was involved in the construction of the 4th power unit of the Khmelnytsky NPP in the city of Netishyn, earlier the buildings of the Zaporizhzhya NPP and the South-Ukrainian NPP were erected with cranes of this type.
The first thing that attracts attention on the territory of the Crimean station is traces of looting and devastation. Just as famously as with the reactor vessel, metal hunters dealt with the control panel of the power unit, the metal structures of the reactor compartment, the condenser cooling system, the engineering building, the equipment of the transport corridor, and much more. They say that the copper cable and cupronickel pipes were taken out of the construction site in whole trains.
In the reactor hall, the cylindrical shaft of the reactor darkens. Everything that is possible has long been cut off in the mine, and its bottom is littered with debris. They even stole the handrails used to inspect the mine. Above is a containment made of reinforced concrete.
The containment, designed to prevent the release of radioactive substances into the environment during severe reactor accidents, is made high-strength. The "prospectors" could not cope with the reinforced concrete structure, and were forced to be content with reinforcement mined from thin slabs. The method is simple: several slabs are lifted by the surviving crane higher and dumped onto a monolithic platform. The concrete of the slabs shatters into pieces, and the remaining reinforcement is handed over to 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 snail of the main circulation pump lies. Judging by the notch of the thick-walled stainless steel pipe, an attempt was made to separate the device into parts, but this task proved overwhelming for the cutters. Nearby is another similar snail, which no one has 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 with the satisfaction of all the requirements for strength and seismic resistance. Now nobody needs him.
From 1995 to 1999, the festival of electronic and club music "Republic of KaZantip" was held every summer on the territory of the KNPP. Thousands of young people gathered on the beaches of the Sea of Azov, and parties and discos were held in the turbine hall of the first power unit. The advertising slogan read: "Nuclear party in the reactor." Windsurfing and kitesurfing competitions are held nearby every year. The same place served as a film 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 tens of thousands of people left to vegetate and survive on the deserted coast of Azov. 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 the numbers of houses, of which there are only about a hundred. Here for a long time there was no street lighting, heating, and the garbage chutes in the houses were welded a long time ago. The city has no money to solve these problems. Life here is in full swing only in the summer, as the locals have switched to providing recreation for visitors. In winter, Shchelkino turns into a ghost town. At the same time, the city does not leave any unpleasant sensations; people, despite the problems they have to deal with on a daily basis, remain cordial and willingly tell stories about the once "all-Union Komsomol" construction, although these stories are not very funny.
The sea is 200 m from the city limits. Cape Kazantip is a seven-minute drive away. Around Shchelkino summer cottages: those who managed to build during the construction of the KNPP - that one has good buildings; those who received plots later - they have nothing at all (at best, toilets from elevator blocks).
The outlook for the city is dim. Perhaps the only direction available at the moment is the development of Shchelkino as a resort region and the provision of conditions for tourists to relax.
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The north of the Kerch Peninsula is not the Tauris that we used to imagine - with palaces, ancient ruins, boarding houses and comfortable beaches. The Leninsky district is better known for the "Kazantip" that raged here. By the way, with the departure of this festival, youth life does not fade: it is provided by other outrageous parties that are held "for old times' sake". And fashionable youngsters are attracted here by the urban landscape - thanks to which the USSR was called the "city of the future." Our topic is the Crimean nuclear power plant, which remained unfinished.
Where is the station located in Crimea?
On the map of the Crimean east, a huge ledge between and bays is clearly visible. Its pommel is , an oval is visible a little to the south. Everything between them is the village of Shchelkino and its agricultural district. However, part of the suburb still became industrial, because there is a partially dismantled nuclear power plant.
NPP on the map of Crimea
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The history of the appearance of the object
The construction of the most expensive (at that time) project in the field of nuclear energy began in 1975, and its development began in 1968. According to the design capacity, the future enterprise was supposed to take place between the Balakovo and Khmelnitsky stations - it was designed for 2 GW. Since 1984, the installation of a nuclear power plant has been declared a nationwide shock construction site, thanks to which the “satellite city” of Shchelkino appeared. Now it has faded and looks more like a village.
Here, for the first time, such world know-how as a polar crane (bridge cargo unit of circular action) and the first in the USSR solar station SES-5 were applied. The Crimean nuclear power plant in the Leninsky district was 80% ready when the news came of the accident at the Chernobyl power plant and all work was first suspended and then frozen (three years later).
How did you not want to use the object afterwards?! After the organizers of Kazantip, the unfinished complex was exploited by extreme clubs offering base jumping to everyone (parachute jumps from low altitudes). In the late 1990s They decided to sell the industrial site to one of the Swedish energy companies.
At the moment - in the "new Russian era" - on the territory of the "failed" Crimean nuclear power plant, the disposal of its constituent structures is underway. The future plans of the Russian Ministry of Energy include the creation of an industrial park here, which has nothing to do with the use of hazardous nuclear fuel. Perhaps this place will become a really famous landmark of Shchelkino and the whole Crimea.
If you are a connoisseur of the terrible, not the beautiful, for example, a fan of post-apocalyptic quests or a digger, then you have come to the right place. On the territory of the Shchelkinskaya NPP, visitors will see gloomy urban landscapes, viewing which in Ukrainian times cost tourists 50 hryvnias - the guards of the abandoned enterprise acted as guides and cashiers. 
Licensed guards were needed to ensure that the dismantling of the enterprise took place in an organized manner, and not with the help of an army of "metal hunters".
So why was the local nuclear power plant never completed? After all, the inhabitants of Crimea desperately needed their own electricity even during the Soviet era, and even more so now. Is it really only because of the fear of a repeat of the Chernobyl tragedy? Discussions in the Russian media are still ongoing. In fact, there were other reasons, such as problems with entering the object.
However, those who come here do not fill their heads with boring thoughts related to the economy. For them, reinforced concrete structures lying side by side and the remaining walls of the main power unit are a location for amazing adventures and a backdrop for "fantastic" photos. Everyone aspires to the turbine department, where from 1996 to 1999. The "Kazantip Republic" held parties under the slogan "Atomic Party in the Reactor", and the now fashionable Fyodor Bondarchuk filmed the film "Inhabited Island". The silhouette of the power unit "lit up" in the frames of other films. It remains to add that travelers should not be afraid of radiation - in the Soviet years, they did not have time to place raw materials here, although they took them all the way to Shchelkino.
How to get (get) to the nuclear power plant?
You can get to the dismantled object without reaching Shchelkino for several kilometers. The final point of the route is the shore of the Aktash reservoir (lake), the road to which starts from the Cherry-96 garden society ().
If the map is the best assistant for you, then here is the route to the sights laid out on it:
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Note to the tourist
- Address: p. Shelkino, Leninsky district, Crimea, Russia.
- Coordinates: 45.391925, 35.803441.
The abandoned nuclear power plant in the Crimea is a bright end to the vacation spent in Shchelkino. Look at the photo of the grandiose landscape, reminiscent of the scenery for a large-scale alien invasion. Inverted modules, remnants of giant units scattered everywhere, gray concrete boxes, a power unit baring its teeth with empty openings - isn't this a place for an “acidic” selfie that you will be proud of ?! In conclusion, we also offer a video about him, enjoy watching!
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