Master's Thesis in Global Studies Lithuania's “Nuclear”

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Master’s thesis in Global Studies

Lithuania’s “Nuclear” Town in a Global World Local Millenials’ Perceptions of Visaginas after the Closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant

Goda Cicėnaitė

June 2021

Lithuania’s “Nuclear” Town in a Global World

Local Millennials’ Perceptions of Visaginas after the Closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant

Goda Cicėnaitė

Final thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of a MA degree in Global Studies Instructor: Jónína Einarsdóttir 30 ECTS

Faculty of Sociology, Anthropology and Folkloristics School of Social Sciences, University of Iceland June 2021

Lithuania’s “Nuclear” Town in a Global World. Local Millennials’ Perceptions of Visaginas after the Closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant

This final thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of a MA degree in Global Studies. The thesis may not be copied in any form without the author’s permission. © Goda Cicėnaitė, 2021 kt. 181191-4579

Reykjavik, Iceland. 2021

Ágrip

“Kjarnorkubær” Litháens í hnattvæddum heimi: Viðhorf þúsaldarkynslóðar Visaginas til kjarnorkuímyndar bæjarins við lokun Ignalina kjarnorkuversins.

Þegar eina fyrirtækið í iðnaðarbæ lokar, upplifa íbúarnir félags- og fjárhagslegar afleiðingar og sækjast eftir vinnu í nágrannabæjum eða borgum. Lokun Ignalina kjarnorkuversins hefur valdið kaflaskiptum í bænum Visaginas, sem tilheyrði kjarnorkuverinu. Missir aðal atvinnufyrirtækisins og rússnesk fortíð bæjarins hafði mikil áhrif á líf íbúana. Afskekkt staðsetning Visaginas og að rússneska hélst aðal tungumál íbúanna eftir að Litháen endurheimti sjálfstæði sitt, dró úr atvinnumöguleikum íbúa Visaginas í öðrum bæjum í Litháen.

Fyrsta markmið þessarar rannsóknar var að kanna hvaða augum þúsaldarkynslóðin lítur náttúrulegt umhverfi Visaginas og byggðina í ljósi hnattvæðingar. Hitt markmiðið var að kanna afstöðu unga fólksins til hlutverks fortíðar Visaginas sem „kjarnorkubær“ í þróun bæjarins. Ellefu djúpviðtöl voru tekin við fólk af þúsaldarkynslóð bæjarins. Viðtölin voru tekin í Visaginas í september 2020.

Í ritgerð þessari er hugmynd Tim Ingolds um landslag og fræðileg nálgun hans á mannlega skynjun notuð til að kanna hvernig viðmælendur skynja náttúrulegt og byggt umhverfi Visaginas. Nálgun Anthony Giddens að hugmyndinni að hnattvæðingu var nýtt til að greina alþjóðleg áhrif á mótun Visaginas í fortíð og nútíð.

Niðurstöðurnar sýna að ungmenni bæjarins taka aukinni erlendri fjárfestingu, ferðaþjónustu og öðrum jákvæðum hagrænum áhrifum hnattvæðingar fagnandi. En þau hafna hugmyndum um að skipta út niðurníddum byggingum sovíet tímans fyrir nýbyggingar í stað þess að gera þær upp og að skipuleggja einbýlishúsahverfi til að laða að fjárfesta ógni afar sérstakri ímynd byggðarinnar í Visaginas. Þúsaldarkynslóðin, sem lítur ekki lengur á Visaginas sem „kjarnorku“ bæ, telja þó kjarnorku vera bestu orkutegundina. Í stað þess að vera mengaður bær, finnst þeim Visaginas vera bæ sem er umlukinn hreinni náttúru og ætti að stefna á náttúruferðamennsku. Það eru vissar mótsagnir í viðhorfum unga fólksins til náttúrulegs umhverfis Visaginas. Um leið og þúsaldarkynslóðin lítur vöxt náttúruferðamennsku sem tækifæri sem myndi stuðla að velferð bæjarins vilja þau að náttúra Visaginas haldist ósnortin, villt og mannlaus.

Abstract

When the single enterprise of a mono-industrial town closes, the residents tend to experience socioeconomic consequences and seek employment in neighbouring towns or cities. The closure of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) has left its satellite town, Visaginas, at a crossroad. Its residents experienced socioeconomic consequences caused by loss of the main industry and by the town’s Soviet past. These, along with Visaginas’s remote location and the dominance of the Russian language in an independent Lithuania, reduced Visaginians’ employment opportunities in other Lithuanian towns.

The primary aim of this research was to explore how local millennials perceive Visaginas’s natural and urban environments in the context of globalisation. The secondary aim was to explore local millennials’ attitudes towards the impacts Visaginas’s “nuclear” past have on the town’s development and its future. Eleven qualitative, in-depth interviews were taken with local millennials. The interviews took place in Visaginas in September 2020.

In this thesis, Tim Ingold’s concept of the landscape and his theoretical approach to human perception were used to explore the interviewees’ perceptions of Visaginas’s natural and urban environments. The concept of globalisation as approached by Anthony Giddens was used to analyse global forces shaping Visaginas’s past and present.

The results show that the local millennials welcome increasing foreign investments, tourism, and other economically beneficial effects of globalisation in Visaginas. However, the replacement of deteriorating Soviet-era buildings with modern ones and the proposal to open an area of the town for private houses to help attract investors are seen as threatening the unique urban image. The local millennials, who no longer see Visaginas as a “nuclear” town, find nuclear energy the preferred energy type. Instead of being polluted, they envision Visaginas as a town, surrounded by clean nature, that should focus on nature tourism. Some contradictions were observed in millennials’ opinions about Visaginas’s natural environment. While millennials see the expansion of nature tourism as an opportunity that would assist the town’s socioeconomic recovery, many still want Visaginas’s surrounding natural environment to remain untouched and uncrowded.

Key words: Visaginas, mono-industrial, millennials, globalisation, Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant

Preface

This thesis is in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an MA degree in Global Studies at the University of Iceland. I would like to thank my research supervisor Dr. Jónína Einarsdóttir for providing feedback on drafts and guidance throughout this research. I would also like to thank the residents of Visaginas, who took part in the interviews, for their valuable contribution and cooperation, and for making me feel welcomed in Visaginas. Special thanks to Dr. Siarhei Liubimau for organising the LCT EHU workshop “Post-Nuclear Urbanism 2020,” which enhanced my knowledge about Visaginas’s urban environment. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to my fiancé Binni who supported and nurtured me at every step of this research. I would also like to thank my friend Vittorio for his constructive criticism that made me think about my ideas from a different angle. I am extremely grateful to Brian Barr and Stefán Benediktsson for their valuable assistance during the final stage of this research. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their profound belief in my work.

Table of Contents Ágrip ...... 3 Abstract ...... 4 Preface ...... 5 Table of Contents ...... 6 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 8 1.1 Research Background ...... 8 1.2 Motivations for this Study Area ...... 9 1.3 Aims, Research Questions, and Objectives ...... 10 1.3.1 Outline of the Thesis ...... 12 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND STATE OF THE ART ...... 14 2.1 Globalisation ...... 14 2.2 Perception Theories ...... 17 2.3 State of the Art ...... 20 2.3.1 Post-Socialism...... 20 2.3.2 Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy ...... 22 2.3.3 Nuclear Decommissioning Associated Risks ...... 24 CHAPTER 3: THE SETTING ...... 27 3.1 Lithuania and Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant ...... 27 3.2 Visaginas: Past and Present ...... 28 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY ...... 31 4.1 Choice of Interviewees ...... 31 4.2 Data Collection: Interviews ...... 32 4.3 Approach to Interview Analysis ...... 33 4.4 Ethical Considerations ...... 34 CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS ...... 37 5.1 Perceptions of the Town: Past and Present ...... 37 5.1.1 Urban Landscape ...... 38 5.1.2 Role of Nature in Everyday Life ...... 41 5.2 Approaching Nuclear Energy ...... 43 5.2.1 NPPs and Nuclear Energy ...... 43 5.2.2 After the INPP’s Closure ...... 45 5.3 The Role of the “Nuclear” Past ...... 48 5.3.1 The City Council and the Generational Clash ...... 48 5.3.2 “Not an Atomic City Anymore” ...... 51 5.3.3 Visions ...... 52 5.4 Summary ...... 55 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION...... 57 6.1 Perceptions of Visaginas’s Landscape ...... 57

6.2 Global Forces ...... 59 6.3 Nuclear Discourse Among Local Millennials and Visaginas’s Future ...... 60 6.4 Strengths and Limitations ...... 62 6.4.1 Strengths ...... 62 6.4.2 Limitations ...... 62 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS ...... 64 References ...... 66

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background Visaginas is Lithuania’s youngest town, situated in the north-eastern part of the country (Daugirdas & Burneika, 2006). The town is heavily surrounded by pine forests and lakes. Visaginas was built in the late 1970’s for the sole purpose of accommodating workers responsible for the construction of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) and their families (Kavaliauskas, VISAGINAS. Istorijos fragmentai (1972-2002), 2003). Since nuclear power was the town’s dominating enterprise, Visaginas was a mono-industrial town. The INPP is undergoing decommissioning, and both of its Units, RBMK-1500 type reactors, are no longer operating. The INPP’s RBMK type reactors are the main reason why Visaginas has often been linked to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Baločkaitė, Lithuania, 2010). In 1986, when the Chernobyl disaster occurred, 60% of INPP’s Unit 3’s construction was completed (IAE, 2020). The intention for the INPP was to have four reactors. However, in 1986, the construction of Unit 3 was first postponed and later permanently suspended as RBMK reactors were already perceived as unsafe (Gaigalis, Markevčius, Skema, & Savickas, 2015). Unit 3 was never completed, and the construction of Unit 4 never took place. Consequently, this impacted the plans for Visaginas’s urban landscape, since it was initially designed to be built in a way to accommodate all workers from Units 1, 2, 3 and 4. Therefore, just as half of the INPP’s expected reactors were not built, the second half of Visaginas was never developed.

After the Chernobyl accident indirectly prevented the expansion of Visaginas, the sequence of global incidents and external forces influencing the fate of Visaginas continued. The restoration of Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1990 was followed by the adoption of a law proclaiming Lithuanian as national language in 1995 (Stsiapanau, 2018). However, this transition left Visaginians in a unique position; Russian was the town’s dominant language, and only a small percentage of Visaginians had any Lithuanian language skills (Baločkaitė, Lithuania, 2010). Additionally, operations at the INPP, including technical documentation and communication between personnel were in Russian. Transitioning operations of the plant from Russian to Lithuanian would have posed a logistical challenge, and by extension, may have also compromised safety. Hence, the Lithuanian National Language Implementation Act was signed on 7 February 1995, with an exemption that allowed Russian to continue to be used at the INPP (Stsiapanau, 2018). Consequently, Russian remained as the dominant language in Visaginas, too. In 2004, Lithuania’s accession to the EU came with conditions that mandated the decommissioning of the INPPs’ Unit 1 in 2004 and Unit 2 in 2009 (IAE, 2020). A consequent loss of employment for a significant amount of Visaginians brought

8 socioeconomic changes, which was followed by a decline in population. Next, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011 eliminated the town’s short-lived hope to build a new, safer Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant (VNPP). With the Fukushima accident, public support for nuclear energy has dropped. In October 2012, a referendum was held to determine whether the proposed VNPP should be built; over 60% of Lithuania’s voters rejected the construction of the VNPP (Atzori, 2016). Lastly, the most recent external factor influencing changes in Visaginas was the filming of HBO’s Chernobyl (2019) at the INPP. It sparked global interest in the INPP and its similarities to Chernobyl; boosting domestic and international tourism in Visaginas that gave hope for its revival and inspired locals’ visions for the town’s development (Mažeikienė, Kasperiūnienė, & Tandzgolskienė, 2021).

1.2 Motivations for this Study Area While growing up in Vilkaviškis - a town in Lithuania’s southwest, I would visit my grandparents in Pempiškė, a small village near Ignalina. Unfortunately my visits were rare, as these locations are 300 km apart. Nevertheless, memories of this part of Lithuania were always special: walks in the pine forests, searching for wolf footprints, swimming in freezing, crystal- clear lakes, bonfires surrounded with stories about locals’ encounters with wild animals, and the myth about the village’s witch. It was not until my early teenage years that I began to wonder why I never noticed the INPP in the many times I drove through Ignalina on my way to Pempiškė. That was when I began to acknowledge the existence of Visaginas and its connection to the INPP. However, I never had a chance to visit either Visaginas or the INPP until I decided to conduct this research. My grandparents passed away, the INPP closed, and I no longer had personal motives to travel to that part of Lithuania, but my curiosity to learn about Visaginas has remained. I wondered whether the former workers of the INPP remained in town, or left to search for employment elsewhere. I also speculated that the decommissioning of the INPP meant that Visaginas’ natural environment would become cleaner and safer.

Whilst searching for Visaginas and the INPP’s decommissioning-related publications, I came across two social anthropological articles by Rasa Baločkaitė: Post-Soviet Transitions of the Planned Socialist Towns: Visaginas, Lithuania (2010) and Coping with Unwanted Past in Planned Socialist Towns: Visaginas, Tychy, and Nowa Huta (2012). Baločkaitė has touched on topics such as Visaginas’s heritage, socialist past, and local identities. Thus, these were valuable sources to enhance my understanding of the ethnic composition of Visaginas’s population and the importance of recognising the role of the individual identities of the town’s inhabitants for the town’s integration into the rest of the country. However, while familiarising myself with academic writings on Visaginas and the INPP, I identified that the focus of the previous studies

9 had been predominantly placed on Visaginas’s original inhabitants, who belong to two generations: Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964) and Generation X (born 1965 to 1981) (O'Bannon, 2001). While it is important to study societal content with emphasis on the first settlers, I identified the importance of investigating the attitudes of Visaginas’s millennials towards the town’s present and future in the context of the decommissioning of the INPP. Millennials, sometimes referred to as Generation Y, can be described as “the generational cohort born during the last two decades of the twentieth century and therefore began their adult life in the new millennia” (Galdames & Guihen, 2020, p. 3). To be more specific, millennials are considered people born between 1981 and 2000 (Goldgehn, 2004). At the time of this study, millennials are considered to be at their most productive age, and thus have high potential to introduce ideas that would aid Visaginas’s resurgence. I see my MA thesis in Global Studies as an opportunity to use interdisciplinary approaches to study Visaginas during the decommissioning of the INPP and to contribute to the existing literature on Visaginas by bringing in the perspectives of local millennials on current debates.

It is important to highlight that this thesis is a study of a small city, and as such, has relevance for urban studies. Urban theorists have disregarded small cities while conceptualising broad urban agendas (Bell & Jayne, 2009). In the social sciences, the definition of a city has a long been a subject of debate. While the definitions vary regarding the qualifying characteristics of a city, the underpinning quality of a city is the presence of characteristics that set it apart from pre-civilised or agricultural settlements (Marcotullio & Solecki, 2012). The local people call Visaginas a city; in this thesis, on the other hand, I am going to refer to Visaginas as a town due to its small population of 17,889. However, I will note that the term “small city” could be used interchangeably with town (Official Statistics Portal, 2021). According to Bell and Jayne (2009), the urban world consists not of global metropolises, but rather is characterised by heterogeneity, and the full extent of this can be seen by studying towns. It is not necessarily appropriate to place towns in contrast to big cities. The urbanisation of towns, their linkages to the global economy, social transformations, and economic activities need to be studied outside of the context of big cities (Zerah & Denis, 2017).

1.3 Aims, Research Questions, and Objectives The primary aim of this research is to analyse the relationship between globalisation influencing Visaginas’s transformations and the local millennials’ perceptions of the town’s natural and urban environments. The secondary aim is to explore local millennials’ attitudes towards the role Visaginas’s “nuclear” past has for the town’s present and future development directions.

Therefore, to clarify the aims of this study, I propose the research questions following:

1. How do local millennials perceive Visaginas’s natural and urban environments in the context of globalisation? 2. How is Visaginas as a “nuclear” town approached by local millennials after the closure of the INPP?

This research explores Visaginas from two different dimensions: global and local. To begin, it introduces the idea that globalisation as a process has an impact on Visaginas’s transformation from the town’s establishment to the present day. Later, an analysis is conducted of the local millennials’ understanding of the recent changes in the town’s urban and natural environments that are, as suggested in this study, influenced by global forces. A particular focus is placed on the decommissioning of the INPP, which is approached in two respects.

First, the decommissioning of the INPP is a process of de-industrialisation severely affecting the mono-industrial town of Visaginas. Lithuania has undergone a post-socialist transition after re-establishing its independence in 1990. The creation of conditions for competition in the context of de-industrialisation of traditional industries was one of the characterising features of the early post-socialist transition (Vilpišauskas, 2014). In the years that followed, new industries emerged as a process of re-industrialisation (Stočic & Aralica, 2018). However, while this phenomenon was applicable in the larger Lithuanian context, Visaginas followed a different pattern. The town’s de-industrialisation was observed two decades later than in the rest of Lithuania (Valatka & Liubimau, 2016). The main reason for this is that until the recent years, the INPP, as the main Visaginas’ industry, provided employment for a significant part of the Visaginas population. Global events and globalisation have much to do with the early INPP’s closure and why it was not replaced with the VNPP. Public opinions on nuclear energy that are shared across the globe influence nuclear policies. Meanwhile, nuclear accidents, though rare, shape public opinion on nuclear energy (NEA, 2010). To elaborate on the impact of globalisation on the INPP and Visaginas, I have chosen Anthony Giddens’s approach to globalisation. Giddens (1999) suggests that distant localities are linked to local happenings and vice versa.

Second, Visaginas’s parallel establishment with the INPP is one of the reasons why Visaginas is commonly called a “nuclear” or “atomic” town; my goal is to explore local millennials’ ideas on what role Visaginas “nuclear” past has for the town’s development directions after the closure of the INPP. Furthermore, I will apply Tim Ingold’s perception theory and its concept of the landscape to analyse how Visaginas’s urban and natural environments are registered in

11 the eyes and minds of the research participants. Ingold’s concept of the landscape is regarded as a totality of natural and urban surroundings, a component of which includes human beings (Ingold, 2000). To be able to answer the research questions proposed in this study, I will begin by providing an historical background of Visaginas and highlighting the dynamics and global influences of the town’s transformations since the begging of its establishment. The concept of Giddens’s globalisation and Tim Ingold’s perception theories will be used to build a theoretical framework. Afterwards, through the analysis of in-depth interviews with the application of the concepts and theories proposed, I will explore how the local millennials perceive Visaginas after its transformations, focusing on the closure of the INPP. Furthermore, I will attempt to identify whether the research participants name any signs of global impacts on Visaginas that I have yet not considered. Lastly, the millennials’ answers to the indicated topics will potentially allow me to explore what future developmental ideas they have for Visaginas and how Visaginas’s nuclear past influences them.

1.3.1 Outline of the Thesis This thesis consists of seven chapters. The first part of the present section (Chapter 1) covers the background and motivations for the study area, aiming to provide readers with context and relevance. The second part of Chapter 1 gives a more detailed description of the core aims of the research; providing the research questions and the thesis outline. Chapter 2 is divided into two sections. The first section presents the theoretical framework of the research, which is built by using Anthony Giddens’s approach to globalisation to examine external factors having a socioeconomic impact and influencing the changes of Visaginas’s urban and natural environments, as well as Tim Ingold’s perception theory to explore the local millennials’ perceptions of the town in relation to the decommissioning of the INPP. State of the art is provided in the second part of Chapter 2, which consists of three sub-chapters giving an overview of existing academic literature relevant to this research. In the first sub-chapter of the literature review, I provide a synopsis of the INPP and Visaginas- related literature produced primarily by Lithuanian authors. In the second sub-chapter of the literature review, I examine factors influencing public opinion on nuclear energy to explore what factors were and still are relevant to the fate of the INPP. The last sub-chapter of the literature review examines nuclear decommissioning-related risks with the emphasis placed on potential socioeconomic changes in nuclear towns after the closure of nuclear plants.

Chapter 3 is split into two parts that provide an overview of the setting. The first part concentrates on a broader scope; Lithuania and the INPP by providing the context of nuclear energy in Lithuania. The second part narrows the scope to Visaginas; the main setting briefly 12 overviewing the town’s demographic and socioeconomic changes of the past and present. Chapter 4 illustrates the methodology used in this study to achieve the research aims. The methodology chapter is divided into four sections. The first section describes the sampling methods used to identify research participants and the criteria for the interviewees to be selected. The second section gives a detailed description of the conduction of the interviews, including the preparation process, practical issues, and interviewing locations. The third section explains how the data analysis was performed and what approaches and software were used. Chapter 5 presents the research findings. It is designated merely to explore the local millennials’ perceptions of Visaginas while considering the town’s connection to the INPP. This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part represents the findings of the millennials’ perceptions of Visaginas’s urban area and surrounding nature. The second part focuses on the interviewed millennials’ discussions about the changes that the decommissioning of the INPP brought to the town. The third part explores the visions local millennials have for Visaginas. Chapter 6 presents the discussion of the findings and includes strengths and limitations influencing the data. Finally, Chapter 7 contains conclusions of the research.

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND STATE OF THE ART

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part provides the theoretical framework for this research. There is a need to assess the impacts that the external, global forces have on the town’s transformation. Therefore, for the first part of the theoretical framework, I chose the concept of globalisation as a tool to explore the driving forces influencing the changes in Visaginas’s urban and natural environments. In the second part of the theoretical framework, I explore the local millennials’ perceptions of Visaginas. I applied Tim Ingold’s perception “theory” and the concept of the landscape as the starting point of analysis. The second part of this chapter is designated to state of the art, which consists of three sub-chapters. The first sub-chapter provides an overview of the existing literature about Visaginas and its post-socialist transition. The second sub-chapter introduces the main factors that shape public opinion on nuclear energy, and how it affects nuclear policies. Finally, the third sub-chapter explores nuclear decommissioning’s associated risks.

2.1 Globalisation

At the end of the 20th century, globalisation and the transition to the post-industrial economy caused the shrinkage of cities in many European countries. The cities that were the most severely affected had an industrial background where a single or multiple industries were dominating their economies (Nilsson, 2018). The closure of an industry that was the sole employer in a working-class town often led to the town’s deterioration. It results in unemployment of workers and declining standards of living through disinvestment in the community, leading to the deterioration of local quality of life. These deleterious effects of de- industrialisation were accelerated by the forces of globalisation (Low, 1996) In the early 1990’s, the transformations associated with de-industrialisation were also happening in post-socialist Lithuania. Some of Lithuania’s towns that were severely affected (such as the mono-industrial town Didžiasalis) are still coping with the socioeconomic consequences (Šliavaitė, 2010). However, while there were some demographic changes in Visaginas after 1990, Visaginas did not experience much population decline, as Unit 2 of the INPP continued to operate until 2009; supplying jobs and thus preventing mass unemployment. Nonetheless, Visaginas faced different challenges after the fall of the socialist system. Visaginas’s inhabitants experienced identity crises and had to negotiate with their socialist heritage (Baločkaitė, 2012). Three decades later, Visaginas is dealing with the other issues, namely socioeconomic consequences of the decommissioning of the INPP.

However, to analyse how Visaginians interpret the closure of the INPP and how they plan their futures and the future of the town, it is important to consider that multiple processes occurring in a post-Soviet state (Šliavaitė, 2010). The transformation process of the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe could be interpreted as a process of ongoing modernisation (Arts, Hermkens, & Wijk, 1999). In his study, The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Anthony Giddens proposed that the globalisation is the late phase of modernisation (Steger & Wahlrab, 2016). According to Giddens, the dynamism of the modern world is associated with modernity that is a social process containing capitalism as one of its features (Powell, 2014). Giddens also suggests that globalisation explains how and why Soviet communism met its end. To his understanding, the Soviet and the Eastern European regimes were unable to prevent western radio and TV broadcasts from reaching the general public. In 1989, media coverage of street protests happening in one country consequently encouraged protests in audience countries (Giddens, 1999).

Globalisation is associated with the growing intensity of worldwide interactions that leads to the enmeshment of local and global events. Subsequently, local events might have consequences that are global, just as global events can cause profound local consequences. Thus, to define in simple words, globalisation is a process of deepening, speeding up, and widening of worldwide interconnectedness (Baylis, Smith, & Owens, 2011). According to Floysand (1999), globalisation has a “double-edged” nature, meaning it can be homogeneous as well as heterogeneous. The process of globalisation shrinks the world with respect to flows of commodities, finance, and information through modern communication and transportation systems. This spatial compression suggests the disappearance of physical barriers and homogenisation of physical space as a result. However, globalisation can also be understood as a heterogeneous process; for instance, when referring to the plurality of socio-cultural actions of people in their daily lives. Globalisation is continuously reconstructing micro and macro contexts, but not necessarily homogenising them. Instead, a compression of physical space by the globalisation process can encourage social space’s heterogeneity (Floysand, 1999). Thus, it could be understood that to get a deeper insight into globalisation’s “double-edged” characteristics requires focusing on a dialogue between the modernisation of a place caused by globalisation, and the social practices of the communities affected.

I have chosen to use the term globalisation as it is defined by Giddens; “Globalisation can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in a such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 1990, p. 64). Giddens sees globalisation as

15 a driving force for development that shapes modern societies by bringing changes to them (Georgantzas, Katsamakas, & Solowiej, 2010). Hence, Giddens implies that globalisation is the most advanced phase of modernisation that evolved to be so intensified that it had to be recognised by different terms; globalising modernity or globalisation (Steger & Wahlrab, 2016). According to Giddens, globalisation has an impact on firms, personal lives of individuals, and societies. He sees globalisation as a force “giving birth” to new individualism as there are changes of professional work when people gain new skills and qualifications and transfer them to a new professional setting. (Georgantzas, Katsamakas, & Solowiej, 2010).

In Giddens opinion, “modernity is inherently globalising- this is evident in some of the most basic characteristics of modern institutions, including particularly their disembeddness and reflexivity” (Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 1990, p. 63). By disembedding, Giddens means lifting out the social relations from local contexts of interaction and their reorganisation across unlimited spans of time-space (Haunschild, 2004). Thus, with the statement that modernity is inherently globalising, Gidden implies that the principal foundations of the dynamism of modernity reflexivity and time-space disembedding or distanciation, and their corresponding institutions and systems such as the nation-state system and capitalism shifted modernity from traditional social order to intensifying and ever- expanding spatial movement (Steger & Wahlrab, 2016). It is important to note Giddens’s acknowledgement that with its geographic origin and disembedding institutions, globalisation (as modernisation) is a Western project (Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 1990). However, according to him, the tendencies of modernity are not as Western, since it permeates all the cultures and regions of the planet (Steger & Wahlrab, 2016).

Globalisation ideas found in Giddens’s The Consequences of Modernity (1990) do not match with the ones of postmodern thinkers who consider globalisation as defining the epochal shift (Steger & Wahlrab, 2016). However, Giddens is not alone in arguing that globalisation is not a new epoch. For instance, Marxists insist that globalisation is an illusion cultivated by the ideologues and experts of the established order, while some world-systems theorists believe in the continued primacy of the nation-state (Burbach & Robinson, 1999). Additionally, in The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Giddens also focuses on risks on modernity and general approaches to risks. While in this thesis, I do not touch upon the perception of risks, but rather the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant and its related socioeconomic, I am not elaborating on Giddens’s approach to risks perception. However, Giddens’s thought-provoking statement that “risk and trust are intertwined, trust normally serving to reduce or minimise the dangers to which particular types of activity are subject” (Giddens, The Consequences of

Modernity, 1990, p. 35), could be an interesting way to approach locals’ perceptions of risks while living next to nuclear power plants. Finally, since in this study, I refer to Visaginas’s de- industrialisation with regard to the INPP’s closure, the post-socialism transitions and transformations need to be considered. Meanwhile, to gain a reliable image of the transformation process and its consequences in Eastern Europe, “it is essential to visualise people’s perceptions and evaluations of what is happening in everyday life” (Arts, Hermkens, & Wijk, 1999, p. 5). Therefore, I move onto the perception theories.

2.2 Perception Theories

The landscape tells – or rather is – a story. It enfolds the lives and times of predecessors, who over the generations, have moved around in it and played their part in its formation. To perceive the landscape is therefore to carry out an act of remembrance, and remembering is not so much a matter of calling up an internal image, stored in mind, as of engaging perceptually with and environment that is itself pregnant with the past. – Tim Ingold (1993, p. 152)

To address the research questions proposed, I chose to use Tim Ingold’s theoretical approach to humans’ perception of their surroundings. Perception can be defined as a process involving identifying and interpreting stimuli which register on our senses (Rookes & Willson, 2000). In the meantime, the fundamental concern of perception theories is the relationship between the nature of perceptual experiences and their effects on our understanding of the external world (Soldati, 2013). The early forms of perception theories date back to antique thinkers’ times. Both Democritus, and later Aristotle, have formed speculative theories attempting to explain how people perceive objects. Aristotle thought of perception as involving four elements: an object being perceived, a medium connecting a sense organ with an object perceived, the sense organ, and the sensus communis (the central faculty of sensation) (Bynum, 1987). Thus, the perception was thought of as a causal process.

However, later thinkers began to recognise that there are differences between sensed entities and real ones; the study of perceptions then was adopted by those studying physics, mathematics, and geometry. Only in the 17th century did the original perception theories return and transform into psychological ones. The prominent examples would include William Molyneux and George Berkley studying the connection between intellectual expertise and sensory perception (Baumann, 2011). Eventually, in the 1930’s, psychologists and philosophers moved from studying perceptions’ basic aspects to entire patterns, yet retained a focus on the mind (Démuth, 2013). The major shift in perception theories took place when Edmund Gustav

Albrecht Husserl (1859-1938) founded phenomenology; the non-reductive, descriptive science of consciousness and its objects as they are experienced (Moran, 2005). The definition of phenomenology, as understood in the twenty-first century, defines phenomenology as a qualitative approach that focuses on studying an individual’s lived experiences and perceptions within the world (Neubauer, Witkop, & Varpio, 2019). At that time, deriving from phenomenology, perception was no longer understood as a mere mechanical and physiological process for obtaining data, but its interpretation and subjective understanding as to the fundamental point (Démuth, 2013). Phenomenology is a tradition that has been prominent for the development of James Gibson’s perception theory (Heft, 2001). Gibson argues that visual perception is a product of the whole body as it moves in its environment rather than an achievement of the eye as a perceptual organ (Janowski & Ingold, 2012).

There are two approaches to assess the issue of perception. As suggested by Gibson, one of them is to understand perception as direct, and the visual display is all that needs to be comprehended. Second, as inspired by late phenomenological ideas, is to contemplate perception as a process where past experiences and other influences create a version of reality (Rookes & Willson, 2000). Both heavily influence Tim Ingold’s perception theory, James Jerome Gibson’s visual perception ideas from Gibson’s “masterpiece” The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979), but also inspired by phenomenological approaches, namely from Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Ingold, 2000). One could suggest that phenomenology would be an adequate approach to answer the research question proposed in this thesis. However, it does not explain causal factors shaping the environment perceived or why it is perceived that way. Phenomenology considers the first-person perspective; supposedly, it is concerned only with the “what” and the “how” of subjective life and its abnormalities rather than with the efficacious factors or processes that brought it about (Sass, 2014, p. 366).

Therefore, to explore how globalisation and the presence of the INPP shape local millennials’ perception of Visaginas, I applied Ingold’s approach to the perception theory. Another reason for this choice was that he uses interdisciplinary approaches that are both “scientific” and philosophical at the same time. Ingold attempted to bring together social anthropology, which suggests that everything is socially constructed, and biological anthropology, which implies that everything about humans is written in their genes. He saw both disciplines as complementary to each other (Ingold, 2000). Subsequently, Ingold proposed an approach to comprehend how humans perceive their environments. According to Ingold, perception is something that is achieved by a human’s entire body and not just by mental process (Alsultany,

2012). Ingold suggests that landscape requires a form for being-in itself in the same way as a body requires a form rather than functions of organisms for being-in-the-world. Thus, Ingold sees the terms landscape and body as complementary terms both requiring embodiment. He argues that humans’ abilities to understand their environments are neither acquired nor innate, but are rather grown in the human organism through training in an environment. Ingold’s approach to understanding humans’ perceptions of their surroundings is new and refreshing. He suggests that the life and reproduction of human beings depend on interactions with abiotic elements of the environment, as well as with other organisms (Ingold, 2000).

In this research, Ingold’s approach to the concept of landscape acts as a framing device informing how I approach Visaginas as a site of perception and as the meaning local millennials impute to it. The landscape has been studied in various ways by anthropologists, ecologists, planners, historians, anthropologists, and geologists. However, it is a subject of study that belongs to no one (Tilley & Cameron-Daum, 2017). The term landscape can be interpreted in many ways. For instance, anthropological concepts of the landscape are distinct from the ones found in architecture. In architecture, humans are the ones who shape and “improve” the landscape for human benefit (Murphy, 2005). Jacob Bronowski states that man is a singular creature since he has “a set of gifts which make him unique among animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape” (Bronowski, 1973, as cited in Murphy, 2005, p. 1). Anthropologists tend to see humans as part of the landscape rather than being outside of it (Tilley & Cameron-Daum, 2017). According to Ingold, the landscape is not nature, space, or the environment, but it is a combination of leading to “totality.” It is also not a pictorial way to represent surroundings or their symbols. Moreover, he argues that the landscape is continually under construction, neither built nor unbuilt, and never complete. Ultimately, Ingold disagrees with the idea that there is a division between inner and outer worlds. He considers the landscape as something that has a symbiotic relationship with humans: “Through living in it, the landscape becomes a part of us, just as we are a part of it” (Ingold, 2000, p. 191). Hence, each component, human and non-human, by coexisting with each other creates the “totality” of the landscape.

However, to discuss the perception of the landscape, there is a need to explain how boundaries are understood. It is commonly agreed that the landscape is heterogeneous as it is composed of various diverse elements and components. Thus, the recognition of those features infers the recognition of boundaries, while different individuals recognise and measure boundaries differently. Subsequently, this means that the understanding of boundaries is in the eye of the beholder, whether an individual or a different organism (Holland, Risser, & Naiman, 1991).

Ingold partly rejects this approach to boundaries. He argues that no feature of the landscape can be understood as its boundary. According to Ingold, rivers, fences, and lakes are integral parts of the landscape, but they do not divide it. A component of the landscape can become a boundary in relation to the activities of humans or animals for whom it is recognised (Ingold, 1993). This implies that Ingold partly agrees that the understanding of boundaries varies among individuals, but places emphasis on organisms’ movement. Finally, regarding boundaries, I would like to point out that the scale matters, as “travelling” across multiple boundaries draws attention to globalisation (Tilley & Cameron-Daum, 2017).

2.3 State of the Art 2.3.1 Post-Socialism A substantial amount of academic literature was produced about Visaginas from a wide range of fields such as anthropology, architecture, ethnology, history, and sociology. Visaginas is considered worth researching because of the town’s diverse ethnic composition and for being the youngest town in Lithuania with no history until 1972. Though, the points of focus that scholars frequently address are the post-socialism in Visaginas and its status as a mono- industrial town. In his publications, the historian Algirdas Kavaliauskas (1999; 2003), focuses on the history of development of Visaginas and the INPP. His book, Visaginas 1972-2002 (2003), provides a detailed description of the construction of Visaginas and the INPP illustrated by statistical data, photographs, and the names of the town’s first inhabitants. However, even though his book is mostly descriptive, in the conclusion Kavaliauskas brought up a couple of questions such as “Why did so few Lithuanian people participate in the plant construction?” (Kavaliauskas, VISAGINAS. Istorijos fragmentai (1972-2002), 2003, p. 395) encouraging the readers to research the history of the INPP further.

Social anthropologist Kristina Šliavaitė in an 2003 article illustrated a timely study on unemployment risks for Visaginians in relation to the INPP’s future. Šliavaitė’s second article (2010), based on her doctoral dissertation, analyses how the inhabitants of Visaginas construct their past and present. It was published around the same time as other anthropological studies demonstrating researchers’ growing interest in Visaginas after the closure of the INPP. The other two social anthropological articles that, as mentioned in Chapter 1, inspired this thesis are authored by Rasa Baločkaitė: Post-Soviet Transitions of the Planned Socialist Towns: Visaginas, Lithuania (2010) and Coping with Unwanted Past in Planned Socialist Towns: Visaginas, Tychy, and Nowa Huta (2012). Baločkaitė highlights that Visaginas is a town with no history prior to the socialist period, making it a unique case in the wider Lithuanian context. Baločkaitė’s articles are valuable sources to improve understanding about the ethnical heritage,

20 how locals perceive their identities, and how they approach the socialist past. Inga Freimane (2014)1 has also touched upon the topic of the Soviet past by analysing the transformations of the material environment in Visaginas during socialist and post-socialist times. Another Lithuanian anthropologist, Neringa Klumbytė, in her article Post-Socialist Sensations: Nostalgia, the Self, and Alterity in Lithuania (2009), explores nostalgia for socialism in a larger Lithuanian context, but the rulings can be applied for Visaginas as well. Based on her qualitative research findings, Klumbytė argues that the way people remember their lives during the Soviet past depends on the relationship between their social status in the past and social marginalisation in the present.

Post-socialist societies tend to avoid talking about their past and identify themselves as European, modern societies. Meanwhile, Western societies often see them as deficient and different (Baločkaitė, 2012). According to Baločkaitė, current public official representations of Visaginas town ignore the Soviet past and create a new identity for the town focusing on its nature and what nature has to offer. However, nostalgia for the Soviet era is often related to populist, pro-communist, and anti-democratic sentiments. In Visaginas case, however, the nostalgic feelings for Soviet times could be partly explained by the financial situation of the locals directly connected with the INPP (Klumbytė, 2009). For instance, during the Soviet era, due to its importance of nuclear energy, Visaginas was relatively privileged as a town in comparison to other towns in Lithuania. The INPP and Visaginas were under the authority of the All-Union institutions in Moscow, which guaranteed higher living standards, improved schooling, and medical care. Commodities and food products were arranged directly from the All-Union foundations (Baločkaitė, 2010). Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, between 1992 and 1998, the average monthly wages for the INPP workers were more than twice as high as the average in the rest of Lithuania (Kavaliauskas A. 1999). However, with the decommissioning of the INPP, thousands of people have lost or are about to lose their jobs. Thus, the nostalgic feelings for the times when Visaginas was growing rather than shrinking are understandable since the only rapid development and growth of the town happened during Soviet times (Klumbytė, 2009).

The book edited by Felix Ackermann, Benjamin Cope, and Siarhei Liubimau, Mapping Visaginas. Sources of Urbanity in a Former Mono-Functional Town (2016) presents a part of participatory research, in collaboration with many other authors, on the changing functions,

1 Inga Freimane (2014). Dwelling in Visaginas: the Phenomenology of Post-Socialist Town (Master’s Thesis). University of Glasgow; University of Tartu, Glasgow and Tartu. Retrieved 02 15, 2021 from https://northumbria.academia.edu/IngaFreimane 21 values, and meanings of the environments built in Soviet times in globalised societies. The series of short publications written in collaboration with several authors involved in mapping Visaginas explore how the town’s inhabitants are included and excluded from the new forms of urbanity. It introduced me to the alternative way some academics study Visaginas; mapping allowed me to understand how cartography can be utilised to explore phenomena caused by various social processes. Finally, the study by Dainius Genys and Ričardas Krikštolaitis, The Public Perception of Nuclear Energy in Lithuania (2017), has been particularly useful to understand general tendencies of public nuclear energy perception and how it is measured.

2.3.2 Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy The critics of nuclear energy first got wide public attention at the Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva in 1955 by bringing up the subject of nuclear power-related risks. A series of articles on nuclear hazards were published in the following years. Eventually, after the National Academy of Sciences panel, it was publicly acknowledged that radioactive waste is more hazardous than any other industrial material (Wearth, 1988). However, in the period between 1963 and 1967, large corporations and American agencies produced many promotional exhibitions and films about nuclear safety. Consequently, the public excitement and worries related to nuclear energy declined (Wearth, 1988). Nonetheless, the dramatic accidents at Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) such as the ones at Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 proved to cause an instant drop in public support and prevent the recovery of public trust in nuclear power (NEA, 2010). Currently, trust in government is a critical factor influencing the levels of public acceptance of nuclear power (Andrews-Speed, 2020). This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in Asia, where most of the world’s NPPs are presently under construction (Wang, Li, Wu, Gu, & Xu, 2019).

Public attitudes towards nuclear energy play a significant role in shaping nuclear policies and are a crucial factor determining whether a country will use nuclear power for electricity production (Siegrist & Visschers, 2013). According to the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the public opinion on nuclear energy is more supportive in countries where nuclear energy is part of the energy grid (NEA, 2016). When discussing a smaller scale, it should be noted that public support for nuclear energy tends to be higher in cities adjacent to existing NPPs due to the associated employment links (Yurman, 2016). This higher amount of support in these communities can be explained by the economic benefits that NPPs provide. Utilisation of a nuclear reactor for energy production not only contributes to that country’s ability to satisfy its energy demands, but also provides an opportunity to sell electricity to neighbouring countries. For instance, the support for nuclear energy was particularly noticeable in Lithuania

22 immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Lithuanian citizens largely embraced the energy produced by the INPP as a national resource (Stsiapanau, 2018). Until the decommissioning of both of its reactors, the INPP met 77% of Lithuania’s electricity needs and exported 58% of INPP’s total output to neighbouring countries (OECD, 2019). Thus, the ability of the INPP to both provide the newly recovering state with inexpensive energy and to sell electricity to neighbouring countries was beneficial for Lithuania during the early post-Soviet transition.

During the mid-1970’s, nuclear energy faced growing opposition. At that time, the environmental movement and its ideas about the risks that nuclear energy pose to the environment also reached the Soviet Union. However, Soviet authorities censored this information (Wearth, 1988). The decisions of Soviet authorities to either censor the anti-nuclear ideas or cover them up with an overwhelming amount of pro-nuclear propaganda led to an imbalance of the nuclear debate. With globalisation and improved technologies, the means of information flow have changed, and thus people became more aware of the hazards of nuclear energy. When on 11 March 2011, the nuclear accident of Fukushima Daiichi happened, the online community exchanged and produced information by sharing it on Twitter, Facebook, and various other social media platforms (Friedman, 2011). However, it is worth noting that when other high-profile nuclear accidents happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the 20th century, people did not have the same benefit of access to information that the internet provides today. At that time, political leadership was the most crucial factor influencing the flow of information flow. The leaders of the USSR delayed reporting the Chernobyl accident to their citizens and the world. For many, this caused severe long-term consequences, such as cancer risk due to radiation exposure. In the Ukrainian and Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republics, the radioactive nuclear contamination caused by the Chernobyl accident triggered peoples’ dissatisfaction with Soviet nuclear policies. In the meantime, in the Baltic states (Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics), anti-Russian demonstrations took place in response to Moscow’s decision to send military reservists to clear out nuclear debris at the Chernobyl NPP; a decision that was viewed by some as ethnic discrimination (CIA, 1987).

Public support in Lithuania for nuclear power after the Chernobyl accident significantly dropped. The Chernobyl accident in Soviet Ukraine influenced the growth of the anti-nuclear movement in Lithuania. The first national anti-nuclear protest under Soviet rule, known as the “The Ring of Life” was organised by Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian Movement for Reforms), and took place on 16 and 17 September 1988 (Stsiapanau, 2018). Consequently, the construction of Unit

3 at the INPP was postponed and ultimately scrapped. In the meantime, the safety of two already existing reactors was improved. However, the INPP’s reactors were still considered unsafe. Hence, they were eventually slated to be decommissioned. In 2008, one year before the decommissioning of the INPP’s Unit 2, there was a referendum on the potential prolonging of the INPP’s operation until the new nuclear power plant was to be built. The results were in favour, with 88,5% approving the extension of operations (CEC, 2008). However, voter turnout was low, and the results were consequently invalidated. However, plans to build the new NPP remained until 2012 when, soon after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Lithuania held a consultative national referendum regarding future nuclear plans in Lithuania. The referendum resulted in 62,6% voting against the new construction of NPP. At that time, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius stated that “the people expressed their wish in the referendum, and I will follow the people’s will” (Schneider & Frogatt, 2019, p. 69). Overall, with the decommissioning of the INPP and the vote against the new NPP, Lithuania became highly dependent on energy imports and usage of fossil fuels (OECD, 2019). Overall, it is important to have a balanced anti- and pro-nuclear power debate to avoid public opinion on nuclear energy being influenced by one side only. In the end, public opinion will determine whether nuclear energy is the future solution to fulfil growing energy demand or is it too risky to have.

2.3.3 Nuclear Decommissioning Associated Risks Decommissioning includes significant technological risks, project-related risks, and human and organisational risks (Borde, Martin, & Guarnieri, 2013). The main technological risks specific to the decommissioning of nuclear reactors primarily concern radiation and contamination. The materials and equipment are likely to be irradiated. Therefore, workers dismantling nuclear facilities during decommissioning are exposed to greater health risks than when working in a regularly operating NPP. An additional risk associated with such a project is that due to the lack of a global decommissioning industry, the costs of decommissioning an NPP are uncertain. Thus, it is complex to plan funding and logistics of the handling of nuclear waste, which are crucial components of the post-productive period of an NPP. Human and organisational risks appear when a reduction in staff numbers has an impact on workers morale. Finally, the process of decommissioning is a complex project involving multidimensional components such as waste management, administrative procedures, and financial issues that can have impacts on the public and pose environmental risks (Borde, Martin, & Guarnieri, 2013).

The process of an NPP’s decommissioning includes the preparation stage, implementation stage, and execution stage. These are the standard procedures needed for the implementation of all regulatory controls that apply to a nuclear facility (Borde, Martin, & Guarnieri, 2013). In

24 other words, decommissioning is a process of permanently closing a nuclear power plant. Decommissioning of an NPP involves problems that are technical by nature, as well as socioeconomic (Fuentes-Saguar, Vega-Cervera, & Cardenete, 2017). A shutdown of a nuclear power plant can significantly impact the local communities, especially if nuclear facilities are located in remote areas where the plant is the main source of revenue and employment. Decommissioning of a nuclear power plant means that many highly skilled workers are no longer needed or are needed only temporarily until the nuclear facility is closed. Therefore, the announcement that a plant will decommission its reactors can have severe consequences for the safe performance of the plant and the psychological well-being of its workers (IAEA, 2008). Due to stress caused by the need to find another job and possibly move out of the “nuclear” town, the performance of nuclear plant workers might drop. Maintaining the highest levels of safety in nuclear facilities always of the upmost importance, and this remains true during the decommissioning process. Heightened vigilance with regard to safety is especially important during decommissioning, as the numbers of available workers may quickly begin to reduce once the process begins, placing a higher burden of responsibility for operational and safety tasks on the remaining employees.

According to a 2008 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are three groups of issues related to the decommissioning of nuclear facilities; these include income issues of workers, psychological issues, and perceived management performance issues. First, the local communities supplying nuclear power plants with labour tend to be placed in remote areas for safety reasons. If a nuclear facility shuts down, significant portions of local communities will face unemployment, since new employment opportunities locally are not likely to arise due to the mono-industrial nature of “nuclear” towns. Consequently, this leads to personal income issues of workers and members of the local community. Particularly those inhabitants who are working for enterprises servicing and supplying goods to an NPP (Baubinas & Burneika, 2001). The employment of a significant part of these communities is often dependent on the local nuclear power plant. Thus, the closure of nuclear facilities can disturb economic activity in the local town. Subsequently, increasing migration of the workers from these towns can cause demographic changes. Uncertainty regarding employment possibilities ultimately leads to the second group of issues related to decommissioning of an NPP: psychological damage. Workers who lose jobs due to decommissioning, as well as those that are still employed during decommissioning phase, but know that they will be unemployed when the process is concluded are at risk to suffer from additional stress. “It is important that the safety of late-life operations and decommissioning is not threatened by loss of morale,

25 uncontrolled staff changes or the other negative impacts of a shutdown” (IAEA, 2008, p. 1). Hence, management performance issue arises as well.

Furthermore, decommissioning of nuclear facilities can have a socioeconomic impact also in a broader community. Firstly, the national economy loses income obtained by selling electricity to neighbouring countries. Secondly, the need arises to find replacement energy sources in the country or import power from abroad. Thirdly, the costly process decommissioning a nuclear facility often requires financial assistance from the IAEA and, where applicable, the European Union (EU). International involvement is particularly important to ensure compliance with international safety standards during the shutdown. Early planning of the decommissioning is required in order to minimise the potential damage and maximise international cooperation. The measures should involve a strategy for management of human resources, career guidance for redundant workers, and compensation funds for those whose employment has been terminated (IAEA, 2008). Finally, 188 reactors are permanently closed due to various factors, including ageing. Many of the world’s nuclear power installations are approaching the end of their productive lifespans. The majority of NPPs worldwide are over 30 years old (IAEA PRIS, 2020). Thus, in the future, as more NPPs are decommissioned, socioeconomic effects should be anticipated in the early stages, and economic compensation should be required for the communities that are in close proximity to NPPs (Fuentes-Saguar, Vega-Cervera, & Cardenete, 2017).

CHAPTER 3: THE SETTING Interviews for this research were conducted throughout September 2020 in Visaginas, Lithuania. The INPP is the integral component for the analysis of Visaginas’s history and development. Hence, the first part of this chapter presents the role of the INPP in the wider Lithuanian context and provides a brief description of the INPP’s history. The second part of the chapter describes the history of Visaginas and its connection to the INPP. It presents the main socioeconomic challenges the town has faced after the INPP’s closure, and briefly describes the town’s unique urban environments.

3.1 Lithuania and Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant Lithuania is the largest country of the Baltic States by both land area and population, and shares borders with Latvia in the north, Poland, and Kaliningrad (Russia) to the southwest, the Baltic Sea to the west, and Belarus to the east and south. According to the State Statistical Department, at the beginning of 2021, Lithuania’s estimated population was 2,795,175 (Official Statistics Portal, 2021). Until 2009, the INPP was responsible for approximately 70% of electricity generation in the country. The remaining 30% came from renewable sources (WNA, 2017). The electricity generated at the INPP was also exported to the rest of the Baltic region and Belarus. However, since Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the future of the INPP’s Soviet-designed RBMK-1500 reactors was at the centre of Lithuania’s energy debate.

The decision to shut down the INPP was taken due to growing nuclear opposition in the country and pressure from the European Union to decommission the reactors that are considered unsafe (Genys & Krikstolaitis, 2017). This was such a high priority for the EU that INPP’s decommissioning was one of the requirements for Lithuania’s accession to the Union. On the 5 October 1999, Seimas (the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania) approved the National Energy Strategy with the plan for decommissioning of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant as the main component (INPP DPMU, 2004). Consequently, the preparations for the decommissioning of both reactors at the INPP began in 2000. The measures included social guarantees, business support schemes, and funding from the EU and Lithuanian Government for the decommissioning process (IAEA, 2008). The INPP’s Units 1 and 2 were shut down on the 31 December 2004 and the 31 December 2009, respectively (IAE, 2020).

After the closure of the INPP, there was still hope for Lithuania’s nuclear future. In 2012, Lithuania was expected to reach the final agreement with a Japanese - American joint enterprise, Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, that was willing to build Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant; a new nuclear power plant with advanced boiling water reactors (BWR) (Pipikaitė, 2012). 27

However, Lithuania’s voters rejected the construction of the VNPP with 62,6% in a referendum held in October 2012 (CEC, 2012). The plans to construct the VNPP were subsequently scrapped, and thus, the decommissioning of the INPP had an impact on Lithuania’s economy, as it meant the end of energy self-sufficiency for the country. There are also socioeconomic consequences identified on the populations closely connected to nuclear power plants undergoing decommissioning. In Lithuania’s case, the population of Visaginas is the one affected the most severely. According to the IAEA (2008), the preparation of early funds is crucial to minimise the socioeconomic impact on the local communities. In Lithuania, the preparations for the INPP decommissioning began early. Nonetheless, the INPP’s decommissioning is still taking place as of the time of this thesis’s writing, and the INPP is expected to be completely dismantled by 2038 (IAE, 2020). Yet, it has been over a decade since Units 1 and 2 were shut down, and the socioeconomic impacts on the local community in Visaginas are already visible.

3.2 Visaginas: Past and Present Visaginas is a town in north-eastern Lithuania that was founded in 1975 as part of the INPP’s infrastructure. The town was built within close range of the borders of Latvia and Belarus, seven kilometres away from the INPP (Liubimau, 2019). It is important to highlight that Visaginas is often referred to as a “nuclear” town due to its symbiotic relationship with the INPP. In fact, the founding stone of the town was laid with the inscription “The town of nuclear energy will be built here, August 1975” (Baločkaitė, 2010). At the time of its establishment, Visaginas was a socialist town called Sniečkus, named after the Lithuanian socialist party’s first secretary of the Central Committee, Antanas Sniečkus. After Lithuania regained its independence, Sniečkus was renamed Visaginas in 1992 (Kavaliauskas, VISAGINAS. Istorijos fragmentai (1972- 2002), 2003). The workers came from different corners of the Soviet Union but were almost entirely Russophones. The construction of the INPP was part of the strategy to connect Lithuania by means of the energy supply system into the All-Union economic structures (Cinis, Drėmaitė, & Kalm, 2008). At the beginning of its existence, Visaginas belonged to the district of Ignalina. However, in 1994 Visaginas was granted town status, and it has been a separate self-governing unit since 1995 (IAE, 2019). In 1997, the number of residents in Visaginas was 33,508 (Kavaliauskas, Visaginas (1975-1999), 1998). As of 1999, 5,108 of the INPP workers lived in Visaginas. These jobs accounted for 38% of all employment in Visaginas (Kavaliauskas, 1999; as cited in Baločkaitė, 2010, p. 67).

However, with the decommissioning of the INPP, more than half of its workers are no longer needed. In 2019, there were around 2,000 people employed at the INPP (Liubimau, 2019). In

2009, when INPP’s Unit 2 was shut down, the numbers of unemployed individuals in the Visaginas municipality reached 1,700, which consisted 9,4% of the local workforce, and reached 15,2% with 2,700 unemployed individuals in 2010 (Utenos Teritorinė Darbo Birža 2012; as cited in Knudsen and Frederisken, 2015, p.11). According to the State Department of Statistics (2020), in 2019, the unemployment rates in the Visaginas municipality dropped to 9,7%. At the beginning of the year 2020, in total, 18,250 people were living in Visaginas, with 18,031 in urban areas and only 219 people were registered as living in rural areas. The population of the Visaginas municipality significantly decreased in recent decades. Many Visaginians moved away after the decommissioning of the INPP, while some already moved immediately after Lithuania gained its independence. Visaginas’s population has decreased by more than 350 people in the year since this research has been. The current population of Visaginas is 17,889 (Official Statistics Portal, 2021).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lithuania’s transition period from a planned to a market economy was marked by a rise in wage inequality and a general shift in the structure of employment (Christenko, Martinaitis, & Kruminas, 2020). For a while, this shift was not particularly relevant for Visaginas. Being a mono-industrial “nuclear” town has meant that a significant part of the employment of Visaginas’s population depended on the INPP. In fact, the majority of jobs at the INPP were well-paid. Lithuania experienced socioeconomic changes characterised by the decline of the working class and the increase of professionals after 1990. However, the de-industrialisation of Visaginas started to become visible two decades later than in the rest of the country, just when the decommissioning of the INPP was about to begin. Between 2001 and 2011, Visaginas lost 30-40% of machine operators and craft and clerical workers, and the population of the town decreased by 9% (Valatka & Liubimau, 2016).

The unique ethnical composition of the Visaginas populace is an important factor affecting the town’s demographic changes. In 1995, the town’s population consisted of 59% Russians, 14% Lithuanians, 11% Belarusians, 6% Poles, and 10% other nationalities (Kavaliauskas A. 1998, as cited in IAEA, 2020). Due to the disproportionately high number of Russian workers populating the town, many people who had lived and worked in the town had decided to move to Russia after Lithuania re-established its independence. In 1995, as mentioned earlier, the Seimas established Lithuanian as a national language, but to avoid social conflicts with the Russian speakers and to ensure security at the INPP, the INPP workers were given permission to use the Russian language for their communication at work. However, around 100 of INPP’s skilled workers quit their jobs, and moved with their families to find work in Russia (Stsiapanau, 2018). The fact that the INPP workers were allowed to use the Russian language

29 for communication was not successful at deterring the migration of the town’s workforce. Currently, former Russophone INPP workers who did not learn the Lithuanian language and decided to remain in the town struggle to find employment, face uncertainty, and exclusion from the rest of Lithuania’s population (Knudsen & Frederiksen, 2015). Thus, the former INPP workers are likely to be facing not only earlier mentioned INPP decommissioning-related issues, but identity issues as well.

In many Lithuanian towns, the Soviet housing estates consisting of high-rise apartment blocks were built during the Soviet period (1946-1990) (Burneika, Ubarevičienė, & Baranuskaitė, 2019). Despite that Visaginas was built within the same period, its specifics of the plan for housing estates were uncommon. The only Lithuanian town that has minor similarities to Visaginas as an urban unit is Elektrėnai (Valatka & Liubimau, 2016). Visaginas, at that time Sniečkus, and the INPP were planned and constructed under the supervision of the secret Committee on Atomic Energy of the USSR, covered under the Ministry of Medium Scale Machines (Cinis, Drėmaitė, & Kalm, 2008). The town was designed following the instructions of the Soviet architect M. A. Belyi and V. Akulin, who designed other nuclear towns, such as Naoi, Uzbekistan, Aktau, Kazakhstan, and Sosnovy Bor, Russia (Baločkaitė, 2012). A big part of Visaginas’s planning ideas was copied from an “atomic” city, Sosnovy Bor (Cinis, Drėmaitė, & Kalm, 2008). The original urban landscape of Visaginas consisted of a mix of grey concrete and red brick apartment blocks, especially designed schools, kindergartens, a nine-storey medical centre, and stores (Cinis, Drėmaitė, & Kalm, 2008).

Over the years, many of Visaginas’s original buildings were repurposed, and some were replaced with modern structures. For instance, the hotel Aukštaitija, which by many was considered to be a symbol of Visaginas, was demolished in 2018. The hotel and the small plot of land around it were sold to a German global discount supermarket chain Lidl. The international retail giant in the first quarter of 2021 operated around 11,200 stores in 32 countries2. According to the public statement of the former mayor of Visaginas Dalia Štraupaitė given to Lithuanian news media3, one of the two main reasons behind the removal of the hotel Aukštaitija was its rapidly deteriorating structure. The other reason was that the hotel was on a verge of bankruptcy due to struggle to heat its twelve-storey building after the closure of the INPP when the energy prices increased. Thus, the hotel was demolished and replaced by a basic but modern, rectangular building designed for Lidl.

2 Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG https://www.lidl.com/about-us accessed on 13 04, 2021 3 Verslo Žinios https://www.vz.lt/nekilnojamasis-turtas-statyba/2017/09/12/lidl-isigijo-viesbuti- visagine--ji-griaus-ir-statys-parduotuve&template=api_article accessed on 02 18, 2021 30

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY Considering the nature of the research questions and this study’s time frame, I identified interviewing as the most appropriate method for data collection. Therefore, I chose to conduct semi-structured (in-depth) interviews as the primary data collection method. Semi-structured interviews provide more flexibility than structured interviews as their format allows interviewees to share their ideas and opinions in their own words, meaning that researchers can explore a topic more openly (Esterberg, 2002). Furthermore, semi-structured interviewing leaves space for research participants to bring up potentially valuable new themes while still focusing on the prepared topics. This type of interviewing gave me an advantage in formulating spontaneous follow-up questions regardless of which topic was discussed at that time. The methods used in this research correspond with the aims to examine local millennials’ perceptions of Visaginas’s natural and urban environments in the context of globalisation, and to explore how local millennials approach Visaginas as a “nuclear” town after the closure of the INPP. The research participants were asked to answer open-ended questions designed to explore their daily life and leisure activities in Visaginas and its natural environment. They were asked to reflect on their childhood memories, and to examine their attitudes towards nuclear energy, Visaginas’s “nuclear” characteristics, and the town’s future.

This study follows a qualitative research design, and the methodology used is influenced by humanistic visions. The humanistic approach requires the use of empathy to understand people’s culture and lives and to gain a feeling for local life. The use of empathy as part of the methodology includes data collection through interviews, life histories, and casual conversations with locals (Bernard & Spencer, 1996). This approach is selected with the purpose of analysing the impacts both of globalisation and of the decommissioning of the INPP. This is researched in the context of a specific community’s perception of the local urban and natural environment “by identifying and describing beliefs and practices of research participants” (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2012, p. 13).

4.1 Choice of Interviewees For this research, I interviewed eleven millennials; five women and six men who grew up in Visaginas and are either currently living there or visit frequently. I selected the research participants by using snowball sampling. Snowball sampling is a technique for finding research subjects by identifying respondents who are then used to refer researchers to other respondents (Atkinson & Flint, 2001). However, to avoid snowball samples becoming biased, I borrowed a feature from quota sampling. Instead of continuously “rolling” the snowball from one person to another, I found three millennials (one through a social media platform, one through an

31 educational institution, and one local Visaginian I had met during a workshop at a summer school). I “rolled” the snowball from them. I believe that this choice increased the validity of the data, particularly when considering the low number of interviews I conducted.

All the interviewees, except one, grew up in Visaginas. After turning fourteen, one interviewee moved to Visaginas, graduated from a school there, moved to study abroad, and eventually moved back to settle down in Visaginas. It is important to note that all the interviewees have left Visaginas for studies or work-related purposes at certain points in their lives, which gives them better insights when comparing life in Visaginas to their experiences in other towns or cities. Finally, all the interviewed millennials are highly educated people from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, ranging from social sciences to computer sciences and robotics. To avoid readers being able to identify the interview participants, I have decided not to name all the interviewees’ professions and not to assign pseudonyms to the professions that I have mentioned.

4.2 Data Collection: Interviews The interviews were conducted in Visaginas, between 1 September 2020 and 1 October 2020. Before traveling from Iceland to Lithuania, I prepared two interview guides to assist me in focusing on the main themes during interviews. The interview guide lists the main topics the researcher wants to ask, and typically includes ideas for follow up questions (Esterberg, 2002). One of the interview guides was detailed, and the other contained a short summary of the key topics. The purpose of the detailed interview guide was to practice open-ended questions and to visualise and compare the number of questions for each theme. The short interview guide highlighting the key topics was placed in a small notebook that I took with me to the interviews. I avoided taking the long interview guide to the interviews for three reasons. First, I wanted to observe the interviewees’ facial expressions and body language, and I presumed that having questions in front of me would distract from this. Second, regardless of the interviewing location, I attempted to create a welcoming ambience to encourage interviewees to freely share their experiences, opinions, and values (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015). Thus, I saw occasional peeking into the small notebook as less formal than to have papers full of questions laid in front of informants. Finally, the short interview guide is practical when conducting interviews outdoors, when the weather conditions and urban furniture need to be taken into consideration.

The interview questions enquired about millennials’ childhood experiences of growing up in Visaginas, their relationship with the local natural environment, and their present perceptions of the town concerning internal and external forces shaping the town’s landscape. The three 32 main points of focus included natural and urban environments and the presence of the INPP. I also designed two sets of questions to explore what visions the research participants have for Visaginas’s future and asked them to reflect on their understanding of the need for Visaginas to maintain its image as a “nuclear” town. The natural resources found in Ignalina district municipality play an important part in analysing local millennials’ perceptions of the local natural environment. However, the key unit of analysis I adopted was Visaginas.

Before the interviews, the research participants were provided with information about the research project, either verbally or in the form of an electronic document. The research participants were asked to decide on which of two languages they preferred to use for their interviews: Lithuanian or English. The majority picked Lithuanian, while three research participants decided to have their interviews taken in English. From those three who picked English, two made the decision due to them having stronger skills in English than in Lithuanian. The third person who decided on the interview being in English speaks fluent Lithuanian but decided to have the interview in English to help me avoid needing to later translate their responses into English. All the interviews were conducted face to face in locations of the research participants’ choice.

Five out of eleven interviewees requested for me to come to their workplaces after their working hours. Many informants felt most comfortable meeting for interviews in their own offices, since they are guaranteed to be able to talk in a relaxed setting with privacy and without interruption (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015). Three interviewees expressed their preference to meet outdoors since September was unusually warm, with the temperature varying between 20ºC to 25ºC. Hence, one interview was conducted by the lake, another sitting on a bench, and two in the parks. Fortunately, the wind was not strong, and there were no people nearby during any of these interviews, meaning that the sound quality of the recorded material was high. Finally, three other interviews were conducted at two different cafés. At first, I was concerned that the quality of the interviews at cafés would be affected by the presence of other people around. However, due to COVID-19 restrictions, such as the two-meter social distancing rule at the cafés, other occupied tables were far enough away to not overhear the interviews.

4.3 Approach to Interview Analysis All the interviews for this study were recorded by using Olympus WS-852 digital voice recorder and transcribed by using Express Scribe Transcription Software. In my transcriptions, I did not omit utterances such as “yeah,” “uh,” “um,” and I have noted long pauses initiated by the research participants and their laughs. I transcribed the interviews in the period between October and November 2020 and began with data analysis in December 2020. Therefore, the 33 utterances assisted me in identifying where the interviewees were doubtful, sarcastic, or not willing to talk about one topic or another. According to Roulston (2012), marking utterances while transcribing can also be a useful method to indicate the interviewee’s potential disagreements (lengthy pauses before answering) or that the topic is sensitive (frequent pauses between answers). However, I did not analyse the frequency of pauses, but have marked the significantly prolonged ones. It is important to note that I removed such utterances from the quotes included in this to enhance readability. Ultimately, once I was done transcribing all the interviews, they were ready for the next step: data analysis.

The process of interview data analysis involves phases of data reduction, reorganisation, representation, and condensation (Roulston, 2013). For this research, I used a qualitative content analysis approach. Qualitative content analysis is a research method for interpretation of the content of text data by systematically classifying and coding data, and identifying patterns and themes (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). I performed the data analysis by reading and rereading the interviews, coding and condensing the meanings, and organising interpreted data with the assistance of qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti. Many academics consider computer- assisted qualitative data analysis (also known by the acronym CAQDAS) as a crucial tool. It is a practical perspective for research helping to manage data analysis by coding and categorising data and making memos (Gribbs, 2013). I found the colour-coding function of Atlas.ti particularly advantageous, as colour-coding has helped me organise and categorise the coded data quickly.

4.4 Ethical Considerations According to the American Anthropological Association (AAA) (2012), there are crucial reminders regarding research ethics, such as the need to protect interviewees’ identities and well-being. Due to confidentiality, privacy, and anonymity reasons, the real names of the interviewees are not provided in this thesis. There are a significant number of risks related to breach of confidentiality of interviews, such as self-aggrandisement, legal problems, and embarrassment of the informant (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015). Therefore, I assigned pseudonyms to the interviewed millennials: Elena, Irina, Magdalena, Natalia, and Vlada for women; Adrian, Albert, Daniil, Igor, Leonid, and Michail for men. As I have mentioned above, while describing the interview’s preparation phase, the research participants were provided with the project information, the purpose of the study, and an explanation of their right to withdraw from the study at any time. I presented the informed consent verbally as it is a process that is essentially continuous and dynamic. Therefore, it does not necessarily require a signed form, “It is the quality of the consent, not its format, which is relevant” (AAA, 2012, p. 4).

I understand any official forms that require signatures and confirmation as potentially intimidating research participants. I aimed to present the necessary information in a manner that would not affect the flexible dynamics of the interviews. Hence, information regarding the project and participant’s rights was provided before to the interviews and participants were reminded at the end of them.

Throughout the research, I understood the importance of ethical responsibility. I am confident that I did not cause any harm to the research participants, and their anonymity was protected. For instance, the research participants were interested in knowing what I have learned from other interviews about the town’s development plans. For ethical reasons, I have not yet shared the data I gathered; aiming to protect the confidentiality of the interviewees and to remain as a neutral observer. I have promised to send the thesis to them once it is completed. The second example of the ethical challenges I faced incudes the interviewees’ interest in meeting me after the interviews while I was still staying in Visaginas. When it comes to the research ethics, over- involvement with the research participants is widely debatable (Allmark, et al., 2009). However, to approach interview respondents from a stance of friendship means that we value their stories and treat them with respect (Tillmann-Healy, 2003).

The first three interviewees, that I contacted myself before the snowball process, were introduced with the project information in the form of an electronic document. Afterwards, the research participants that were contacted through the snowball process were able to either receive the project information by email, or to hear about it once we met. The project information included the purpose of the study, the main topics of the research questions, how the collected data would be kept and used. All the interviewed millennials were promised anonymity and that their personal information would not be disclosed at any time. Furthermore, I explained the ways I intended to protect the voice recorded and the transcribed material of the interviews, and that the interviewees could stop or withdraw from participation at any time. I provided my contact details, namely my email address and phone number. Finally, prior to the interviews, I have specified the expected time frame of the interviews to make sure that the interviewees were given enough time to cover all the research topics prepared. The expected time for each interview was 60 minutes.

Since the research participants have warmly welcomed me, and some of them were keen on showing me the town in alternative ways, I have accepted the offer to visit some of the town’s abandoned buildings during the daytime and during the night. After climbing up onto the roofs of a couple of multi-storey buildings, I was greeted by a panoramic view presenting how forests surrounding Visaginas blend into its urban landscape, and how small two of INPP’s chimneys 35 look while sticking out on the horizon. It allowed me to gain a better insight into how some of the interviewed millennials perceive the town and how they approach Visaginas’s urban landscape. I believe that this “over-involvement” with a couple of the research participants did not breach the principles of ethics, but rather enhanced my knowledge of the town by giving me a chance to see it from different perspectives.

I had considered the potential ethical issues that might occur due to the languages used and the ethnic backgrounds of the research participants. Even though many Visaginas’s residents understand and speak Lithuanian, the Russian language is the first language for the majority. The use of an informant’s mother tongue during interviews can generate more authentic answers (Welch & Piekkari, 2006). However, being a Lithuanian that does not have sufficient Russian language skills, I had to conduct the interviews in either English or Lithuanian. I aimed to select interviewees with a range of backgrounds, as opposed to only interviewing Lithuanian or Russian speakers. The interviewees who were not confident about their Lithuanian language skills were able to use the English language, meaning that, during the interviewees’ selection process there was no discrimination or differentiation based their ethnic backgrounds. Finally, as the theme of the study does not appear to be sensitive, the questions asked during interviews should not cause harm to interviewees bodily or material well-being or dignity.

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS When I decided on this research topic, I had certain ideas about Visaginas’s inhabitants, as well as the urban and natural landscapes. My understanding of Visaginas was entirely shaped by what I had read in the existing academic literature, what could be found in Lithuanian and foreign media, and by what I have learnt from Olga Černovaitė’s film Butterfly City (2017). I expected to find local millennials waiting for a chance to escape from the deteriorating town “frozen in time,” where Soviet era spirit found a way to linger. Moreover, while being a millennial with sceptical views on nuclear energy, I anticipated the research participants to have similar views as my own due to age similarities. However, in conducting the interviews I did my best to remain impartial and not allow my personal views to influence the answers of the interviewees. The presumptions I held about the town and the local millennials seemed to not match the reality that I discovered upon arriving in Visaginas.

It has been more than a decade since the second reactor of the INPP has been shut down. The findings of the research presented in this chapter illustrate the interviewed millennials’ opinions on the changes associated with decommissioning of the INPP in Visaginas, its “nuclear” story, and how these changes shape their attitudes towards the town’s future. The first section of this chapter presents the role Visaginas’s urban and natural environments play in local millennials’ present-day lives and reflects on their childhood memories with emphasis placed on Visaginas as a compact town. The second section of the findings chapter implements the topic of nuclear energy and the INPP. It gives an overview of the research participants’ attitudes towards the INPP, and nuclear energy in general. Afterwards, it presents the findings of their socioeconomic concerns and shifts in urban and natural environments after the closure of the INPP, as viewed by the town’s millennials. The third and final section of this chapter covers three separate aspects aiming to present local millennials’ opinions on Visaginas’s recent developmental achievements and transformations, explores what local millennials find as obstacles to bring new ideas in Visaginas, and presents their ideas for Visaginas in relation to the town’s “nuclear” past.

5.1 Perceptions of the Town: Past and Present The first part of this subchapter explores what it means for the local millennials to grow up in Visaginas. It discusses the pros of living in apartment blocks, the town’s recent urban changes, and identifies the risks a new residential area planned for private houses would pose. The second part analyses the role Visaginas’s natural environment has on the daily lives of local millennials and their attachment to Visaginas.

5.1.1 Urban Landscape One of the unique features of Visaginas is the absence of residential areas planned for private houses. In 1979, when the construction of the town’s housing estates was close to completion, the newcomers moved into apartment blocks. According to the local millennials, living in the apartment blocks was never an issue. However, after the closure of the INPP, it has become evident that the absence of an area for private houses in Visaginas is becoming an obstacle to the town’s economic recovery. It has been discussed that potential new investors would not be keen on living in Visaginas’s Soviet-era apartment blocks, and thus would not bring in their businesses. The proposed idea to plan an area for private houses in Visaginas is controversial. One interviewee, Igor, expressed his fears that it would bring to Visaginas more harm than benefit:

It would be a bad thing for Visaginas. The harmony would be disrupted, and there would be an increase in car usage. The worst thing, the social inequality would increase, because we would have this expensive trendy area planned only for rich people.

The interviewees believe that living in apartment blocks has helped maintain social equality among people and create a strong sense of community and safety. The personal experiences of the interviewees also show that living in the Soviet housing estates has meant that the exterior or location of people’s homes was not an indicator of their wealth, while the equal conditions of living spaces kept everyone together. For instance, another interviewee, Natalia, expressed that since all of her friends were living in the apartment blocks, nobody cared about the social status of a person’s housing situation, and social inequality would appear only in clothes, phones, computers, and other material possessions. Another interviewee, Elena, has claimed that in Visaginas, one could not show off his or her wealth by where he or she lives. She suggested that the reason why there are still not many inordinately rich people living in Visaginas is because they could not own private houses there. Therefore, if built, a new residential area with private houses would potentially increase social inequality in Visaginas. Furthermore, most of the interviewees expressed their worries that an average Visaginian would not have an equal opportunity to purchase a private house. For instance, Adrian, another interviewee, has claimed that new residential plots would be sold through auction. Thus, only wealthiest people would be able to purchase a plot of land considering that the planned residential area would not contain enough of plots to relocate every Visaginian family interested in moving into a private house. Adrian is completely against the idea of private houses area in Visaginas, and is willing to fight it:

I will stand over there, I will not let tractors build in that area because it would be for rich people. I would never afford a private house in Visaginas. I am not a private house person, and most of us are not. Those rich people want private housing to distinguish themselves as the bourgeoisie.

The presence of private housing might transform the town in other negative ways as well. For instance, one of the research participants noted that an area with private houses would mean the appearance of fences which may perhaps have an impact on movement dynamics. According to interviewee Michail, an area with private houses would contain diverse styles of buildings that would not necessarily match with each other. The aesthetics of the urban landscape are crucial for millennials’ perceptions of the town. Even the demolition of “iconic” Soviet-era buildings or their renovation are matters to which both old and young generations pay close attention. For example, two interviewees, Natalia and Michail, expressed disappointment in the choice of colour combinations used during the restoration of Gerosios Vilties School. Another case of Visaginas’s urban changes was the demolition of the hotel Aukštaitija in 2018. Situated in the city centre, the hotel Aukštaitija was the tallest building in Visaginas that, according to the interviewed millennials, was a unique component of Visaginas’s urban landscape. Most of the interviewees agree that the building of the hotel was reaching it critical condition and was becoming unsafe. Meanwhile, the interviewees Leonid and Irina see the removal of the hotel Aukštaitija as a squandered opportunity to maintain one of the town’s unique features that could have been used to attract tourists from Lithuania and abroad. Leonid would prefer to demolish buildings that are abandoned than the ones that could still be used:

For me personally, it was sad because the hotel Aukštaitija was demolished while next to it there are some buildings that were never completed. Why were they not the ones to be demolished? It would be possible to demolish or do something with buildings that are not fully built yet. Now, they are just half-built.

On the other hand, most of the interviewed millennials stated that regardless of how special this hotel was, it needed much investment and repurposing since there was no need for such a large hotel in Visaginas. Elena noted that, in the past, the international Visagino Country music festival used to attract many tourists who would stay at the hotel Aukštaitija, but when people’s interest in the festival declined, so did the number of guests coming to stay at the hotel. Overall, the “unsuccessful” renovation of Gerosios Vilties School and the demolition of the hotel Aukštaitija are just two notable changes in the town affecting local millennials’ perceptions of Visaginas urban landscape and nostalgic memories.

As mentioned, hundreds of Visaginians moved to search for a better life elsewhere, many left their apartments unused. Shrinking population means there are fewer children in the town. Consequently, many children’s playgrounds have been removed. The spaces of the former children’s playgrounds are being used for different purposes, such as parking lots. This phenomenon is part of the post-nuclear transformations of the Visaginas urban landscape. Adrian expressed his claims highlighting the severity of the situation:

The parking lots ate a lot of the city. If you look at the map, I would say 70% of them were built on children’s playgrounds, because it is the easiest thing to cut out.

The responses to whether millennials care that the old children’s playgrounds are disappearing, or are being replaced with new ones, were mixed. Only one of the research participants has a child, but all the interviewees have strong opinions on this matter. The majority see the removal of the children’s playgrounds as a part of the degeneration of the Soviet-style urban landscape and as a part of the integration process to the rest of the country through “assimilation.” The interviewees recalled nostalgic memories about their childhoods, including much time spent in those playgrounds. It is notable that those children’s playgrounds do not match modern safety standards. However, their removal and replacement with contemporary playgrounds are also seen as a sign of Visaginas losing its unique infrastructural features that could be used as interactive memorials. Three participants were convinced that those children’s playgrounds were designed especially for Visaginas. They were a part of the town’s history that was supposed to be left as a relic for tourists and locals alike. The fact that several children’s playgrounds were replaced with parking lots touches another sensitive topic; the increase in the usage of cars irrespective of the town’s shrinking population. This ties into the topic of private houses, an increase in which would likely see an associated increase in private car usage.

Visaginas is a compact town. One could walk to the centre in under fifteen minutes from the outskirts of the town. At the town’s economic height, there was no need to drive to the city centre, as all the main shops were found in pedestrian-oriented Sedulina Avenue. However, this pattern has changed with the appearance of the Domino shopping mall in the town’s centre, and a big parking lot next to it. Consequently, the shopping dynamics evolved. Also, just across the street from Domino, there is a supermarket Lidl that was built instead of the hotel Aukštaitija, and a Lithuanian retail company Norfa. This has shifted the “shopping hub” from the Sedulina Avenue to Veteranų Street, which is more accessible by car. Excessive usage of cars seems to be unnecessary in this small town surrounded by forests. Visaginas is a green town full of pine trees. Some say it is a town in a forest. It is important to mention that Domino was built on 40 previously unused space covered with pine trees. Thus, the increasing number of cars not only threatens the environment of the town with pollution, but it also has an impact on how the town’s infrastructure is being used. Moreover, these infrastructural changes influence how local people perceive the town’s urban and natural environments. Natalia gave an example showing why the old shopping patterns are changing:

They built Domino and showed that it needs a very big parking lot. Then, people thought, ‘why would I walk around the city if I can sit in a car, go and buy everything in one go. This is how I save my time. I save energy, and so on.’

According to the research participants, the town’s size and accessibility had a significant influence on their quality of personal development while growing up. For instance, they were able to attend after-school activities that otherwise their parents would not have time to take them if they have lived in a big city. This has been confirmed by the interviewee who has moved to Visaginas from the big city at the age of fourteen and was able to compare the disparities. There was enough time to go to school, attend extra-curricular activities, play sports, complete homework, and have enough free time left over to spent outdoors. Regardless of its size, locals still perceive Visaginas as a city. The main reasoning identified why Visaginas is considered to be a city by local millennials, and not a town, is the absence of private houses. While growing up in Visaginas, children perceived other Lithuanian population centres to be towns, since cities were associated with apartment blocks. Thus, the appearance of private houses and the demolition of apartment blocks would threaten to “kill” the city and turn it into a “simple” town. The interviewees also expressed their early understanding that Visaginas was a unique place in comparison to other towns. When visiting other towns, they regarded the Lithuanian language as “foreign.” The expression “going to Lithuania” is even jokingly used by locals, illustrating that many locals do not feel like Visaginas can even be considered Lithuanian. Visaginas was perceived as a unique place with its own identity that is not aligned with the rest of the country. After the closure of the INPP, the assimilation process began. The respondents say that more and more young people understand the importance of learning the Lithuanian language and the need to integrate.

5.1.2 Role of Nature in Everyday Life In Visaginas, urban and natural environments blend with each other. Children’s playgrounds, apartment blocks in all three micro-districts, and the city centre itself are densely surrounded by pine trees. There are also two lakes inside of the town: Lake Visaginas and Lake Kukuižė. The beach of Lake Visaginas is just next to the town’s centre. It is a place to play volleyball, basketball, rent a boat, water bikes, or just to have coffee and relax. Igor has said that in summer, 41 he and his friends are “constantly next to the lakes,” but not necessarily next to the two that are in the town. Other lakes exist just outside of the town, and it is common for locals to drive to them for a barbeque with friends, or just to “eat a kebab” in the car while enjoying views of the lake. The interviewed millennials’ answers to which lake is their favourite included seven different lakes (Visaginas, Baltas, Šventas, Karačiunka, Smalvas, Trilypis, Žiežulinis) ranging from the ones in the town to the ones that are 10 to 15 km away from Visaginas. It appears that people are choosing a lake depending on what they intend to do. For instance, Lake Visaginas is named as a prevalent choice if you want to read a book or have a walk, but it is not a preferred place for swimming, as the other lakes are perceived as cleaner. A frequently reoccurring requirement that appeared during the interviews was for the lakes’ surrounding environments to be peaceful. The interviewed millennials associated the term peaceful with an absence or low numbers of people around the lakes. Daniil expressed that, for him, Lake Baltas is his favourite, because he can be there on his own, nobody would disturb him, and he would not disturb anybody else. According to Igor, Visaginians consider it a luxury to find these peaceful places, and it relates to the high numbers of lakes found in Visaginas’s municipality:

If there was only one lake, there would be no peacefulness, but there are plenty of lakes in the region. If you want to find a peaceful place, you could just walk to the Lake Kukuižė. It is rare that someone is there.

It appears that the presence of nature inside of the town had a significant impact on millennials’ childhoods. Once asked about their free time activities while growing up, fragments of memories appear, such as cutting trees to make football gates, playing with tree branches, or meeting friends at the beach or the forest. The research participants perceive nature as part of the town and are so used to it that sometimes even forget that, for example, pine trees are growing everywhere in the town. The research findings show that when young adults move from Visaginas to study in the other cities, they realise what kind of role the Visaginas natural environment has had in their lives. For some, its nature is one of the main reasons why they moved back to Visaginas after completing education elsewhere. For instance, one of the interviewees no longer has any relatives living in Visaginas, but after gaining a degree in Vilnius, moved back to Visaginas, as it is “a place where one can find peace.” In the meantime, two interviewees officially work in other cities (one is even working for a company based abroad) while residing in Visaginas. Nature and affordability are two identified factors motivating young people to come back to stay in Visaginas. According to Magdalena, another interviewee, it is not worth it to stay in the big cities and pay a high price for an apartment when

42 you can be in Visaginas and enjoy nature every day. Michail, who also moved back to Visaginas because of its nature, shared his experience, which appears to be akin to others’:

Nature for me is very important, and I felt that severely while I was living in Vilnius, on a street with no plants, only cars. I was missing the ability to open a window and see a forest.

Mushroom, herb, and berry foraging, and fishing, are the activities that the older generation of Visaginians thought of their children and grandchildren. Magdalena claimed to have a knowledge of most of the mushrooms and berries, since she has been going to the woods from early childhood. Similarly, the other interviewed millennials admitted having a good knowledge of Lithuanian flora and fauna. Mushroom picking is still a common activity among young adults who often proudly present their harveston social media. Though, there has been a generational change in the pattern of people’s relationship with nature. The interviewed millennials highlighted that their knowledge of local herbs, berries, and mushrooms is good, but not as good as their parents or grandparents. Nevertheless, their fondness for nature remains strong. Daniil explained that even though his older family members like mushroom picking, he does not enjoy it, but since he loves nature and its beauty, he often goes tent camping. Natalia described the distinct love for nature similarly to Daniil:

I feel connected to nature. I am going to relax in the forest. I am just enjoying being in nature. I am not keeping up with the traditions that the first people who moved here had. They used to go mushroom and berry picking.

Daniil believed that the younger generation cares about the town. One of the indicators for it is the improving trash situation. Firstly, there is an increase in young people joining in cleaning the town on weekends. Secondly, the young generation seems to be more responsible with recycling and sorting of trash. Daniil recalled that when he was growing up in Visaginas, he and other students were throwing “everything into one trash bin,” while now students are more responsible and aware of the need for recycling.

5.2 Approaching Nuclear Energy The subchapter analyses the interviewed millennials’ opinions on the INPP’s decommissioning and the short-lived plans for the VNPP. Additionally, it explores the interviewees’ attitudes towards nuclear energy and the risks it poses.

5.2.1 NPPs and Nuclear Energy The research findings show that the millennials growing up in Visaginas were not worried about their safety while living next to the nuclear power plant. The main reoccurring factor named is 43 the understanding they had about working conditions at the INPP. The knowledge about nuclear energy and the INPP to millennials was passed by their relatives working at the INPP, neighbours, and teachers. In this context, the point that Visaginas is a compact town is also an important factor. Michail explained:

The city is small, and we can talk to engineers of the INPP. Then, you start to understand how it works and what is safety there. You also understand that the technology there was new and there was nothing to be afraid of.

A couple of the interviewees seemed slightly offended when somebody was questioning their views on nuclear energy and the safety of the INPP. For instance, Igor has said that he was “absolutely not afraid of the INPP” and that his family was “intelligent” enough to explain why it is good to have it. Before the decommissioning of the INPP begun, children at schools had training on how to act in case of emergencies. Thus, the residents felt prepared that if there was ever an accident, they would be able to safely evacuate. The research participants shared an understanding of the INPP formed by the stories of its workers. The working conditions at the INPP have improved since the Chernobyl accident, and security and accident prevention became a priority. Daniil, for example, was convinced that security at the INPP before its closure was better than anywhere else in the world in comparison to the other nuclear power plants. Elena, like the other interviewees, has stated that neither she nor her parents were worried about the INPP’s presence. She supposed that, generally, there are not many Visaginians who were ever afraid of the INPP’s presence.

Elena was one out of three interviewees who brought up the disappointing case of unfulfilled plans to construct the VNPP as a safer replacement for the INPP. She remembered it as a hope to save the jobs of the INPP workers, including her father’s. However, she did not show interest in elaborating on the topic by answering with an annoyed tone that too much time has passed since then. On the other hand, Adrian still remembers the promises and hopes that came with the idea of the VNPP. According to him, local people were convinced that it would happen, because the topic was not just debated, but representatives from Hitachi came to town, and the preparations for the VNPP’s construction had begun:

They made merchandise. They had an office in central Vilnius. They had a director. They were working. People were hopeful like, ‘Oh, we are going to have our own VNPP!’ Vilnius University was going to start a course on atomics. Then, BANG! The deal was off.

Adrian thinks that Lithuania has lost a lot by missing the chance to construct the VNPP. In his eyes, it was an opportunity not just to provide Lithuania with electricity, but also to sell it to the rest of the Baltic States. Igor was the third interviwee to bring up the topic of the VNPP. He named two outcomes of the broken deal with Hitachi. First, he believes that the loss of the short-lived hope for Visaginians to have a new NPP is one of the reasons why Visaginians are no longer enthusiastic about the town’s potential development ideas. In his opinion, local people have lost their trust. Second, Igor also believes that another consequence of not constructing the VNPP is the construction of the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant in Belarus.

According to most of the interviewees, the decommissioning of the INPP was unnecessary, as it was vital for the town’s economy, and it was able to function safely for many more years. All research participants have named numerous negative impacts of the decommissioning of the INPP in Visaginas. The closure of the nuclear power plant caused thousands of people to lose their jobs. Many of them were highly skilled engineers lacking any other job options in a post- mono-industrial town. Consequently, the unemployment in Visaginas increased, a number of families had to move away to start their lives elsewhere or had to adapt and take on different roles. The parents of two interviewees used to work at the INPP, while the parents of two other research participants are still working there, since the total dismantling of the nuclear power plant will not happen until 2038. Daniil, used to work at the INPP himself. Other participants have relatives and friends who lost their jobs because of the INPP’s closure as well.

5.2.2 After the INPP’s Closure The lack of positive changes in Visaginas is evident. While Visaginas’s older generation had to adapt, accept lower-paying jobs, or leave, millennials do not see many good job opportunities in Visaginas either. The research participants have mentioned that, in Visaginas, there is not much for young people to do outside of working as a cashier, or at the furniture or textile factories. Yet, unemployment and the absence of industries are not the only issues motivating young people to leave. According to Elena, the lack of options for entertainment is also an issue and is worse during the wintertime. Consequently, whether for employment and education purposes or for cultural reasons, young Visaginians tend to move to more prosperous cities. Thus, it becomes even tougher to maintain the town’s appeal to the remaining young members of the society. Moreover, without the presence of young people, it becomes more difficult to attract investors. For instance, Daniil explained that decreasing population is threatening the town’s educational institutions such as the school of acrobatics or the school of mechatronics. In his opinion, it is the responsibility of the City Council to get money and attract businesses to prevent the decreasing of the town’s population. In the meantime, Igor and Adrian pinpointed

45 that the government of Lithuania is partially responsible for factors negatively affecting Visaginas transformations. They feel that the Lithuanian government tends to forget about the existence of Visaginas. Two of the suggested reasons why Visaginas cannot integrate into Lithuania are the Lithuanian language barrier and the remote location of the town.

Nevertheless, once requested, the research participants have named some supposedly positive changes in Visaginas brought by the closure of the INPP. According to Igor, the closure of the INPP has helped with “Visaginas’s integration into Lithuania.” The town had to adapt, and now it is more reliant on Lithuania’s budget. Igor, however, sees the town’s assimilation to the rest of the country as damaging, because Visaginas is losing its unique features. Natalia started to name some benefits of the INPP’s closure. Firstly, she is grateful that Visaginians started to think about the town in a much broader sense and now have a chance to search for alternative development directions. Secondly, she believes that when the INPP was still operating, Visaginas was in a sort of “stagnation,” because locals had one understanding of what is standard and struggled to accept alternative lifestyles. Thus, now it is becoming easier to be different, whether by appearance or beliefs. Albeit, while naming benefits of these opportunities to choose and search what Visaginas can become, Natalia realised that she might be contradicting herself. Her optimistic statements about the town’s possibilities and progress have shifted to naming why it might not be achieved:

We are losing the smartest residents, and our common vision suffers. It just seems that we have options, but there are not many people who will towards those future visions because people have no trust and cannot see what could be good for the future.

Similarly, Vlada, another interviewee, thinks that the closure of the INPP has pushed Visaginians to start thinking about what else the town can offer. Vlada is also convinced that the decommissioning of the INPP taught locals how to save and be more ecological:

They were thinking that they will always have job. The City Council thought that there will always be money. Now we know that we need to save heating and energy. Before, we did not have these ideas.

Michail expressed that the decommissioning of the INPP stimulates changes in the town that could be positive if the opportunities presented would be used wisely. He highlighted the need to use the EU funds in a manner that would benefit Visaginas in the long run, rather than, for instance, buying tiles for the paths that will need to be replaced after a decade. Michail’s

46 sarcastic remark suggests that he is not satisfied with where the EU funds are going and stresses the necessity to make sustainable decisions.

Most of the interviewed millennials have claimed that the INPP either did not negatively affect the local natural environment at all, or the impacts were minor and not dangerous. Igor, for instance, is certain that there was never a connection between the INPP and local nature that would harm the environment in any way, and that there is “a lot of information about it.” Nonetheless, it is known that when the INPP was operating, Lake Drūkšiai was used for cooling the reactors. Consequently, the average temperature of the water in the lake slightly increased. Local people were aware of the water temperature changes since the lake stopped forming ice on its surface during winters while INPP was fully operational. However, most of the interviewed millennials do not see it as a harmful phenomenon or at least not the one that had a long-term effect.

Only Vlada expressed that it must be “easier” for their local nature after the INPP’s closure. According to Vlada, due to her knowledge acquired by research findings, she is certain that there was an impact on nature. Nevertheless, two research participants expressed their concerns that it is possibly worse for nature that the INPP was shut down “too early.” One of the arguments brought up by these interviewees was that the unused nuclear fuel needs to be stored or transported instead of being used for energy creation purposes, thus increasing the risk of an accident that would be potentially harmful to nature. Another argument, also given by most of the interviewees, is that to claim that the although the closure of the INPP brought positive effects on nature, the means of energy production replacing the nuclear power should be investigated. Michail shared his worries:

I do not know from where they are taking the electricity, but this is what needs to be considered. Maybe they are burning something to obtain that energy. Then, it would mean that the closure of the INPP is even worse for nature.

Correspondingly to Michail, Vlada, who agreed that the INPP had an impact on nature, expressed that while radiation from nuclear waste storage “slowly gets to the ground,” it does not affect people’s lives as much as the greenhouse effect does. Vlada pointed out that the greenhouse effect is a consequence of the other types of energy. Thus, she believes that the best option would be to have improved nuclear reactors:

If they can build nuclear power plants that have a minimal impact on nature, then I would not be against them. I understand it is the cheapest way to get that energy, and it is cleaner than coal burning. 47

The alternative types of energy did not appear as a topic the interviewees were willing to discuss in detail, and while the answers of the interviewed millennials’ preferred types of energy were slightly diverse, nuclear power still gained the most support. Nuclear energy was named as one of the cleanest and most efficient energy types. Leonid pinpointed that since there is a huge energy demand, there exists a question if they would be capable of meeting the demand just by using solar panels. According to him, solar panels are not eco-friendly. Thus, in Leonid’s opinion, the ideal scenario would be to construct a nuclear power plant with hydrogen reactors that would not require the storage of nuclear fuel. He would also recommend building a new NPP “a bit further from the city.”

5.3 The Role of the “Nuclear” Past The first part of this subchapter provides an overview of what the interviewed millennials’ see as obstacles preventing young people from staying in Visaginas. The second part explores how the interviewees approach Visaginas’s “nuclear” story in the present day. The third and the last part discusses the interviewed millennials’ visions for the future of Visaginas.

5.3.1 The City Council and the Generational Clash The interviewed millennials are not fully satisfied with the town’s achievements of the last twelve years. According to the findings of this research, the increased numbers of grocery stores and cars in the town are not identified as indicators of success. For instance, another interviewee, Elena, questions the increasing number of supermarkets and grocery stores in the town while the town’s population is shrinking. Although, local people have witnessed the changing dynamics of cross-border shopping. Most of the interviewed millennials admitted to regularly going to Daugavpils in Latvia for shopping and entertainment purposes. It is identified as a “normal” phenomenon among Visaginians. However, the increasing number of supermarkets in Visaginas have reversed the flow of people, as it is noticed that more and more Latvians are coming to Visaginas for shopping purposes. The supermarket Lidl is named as the main attractive point for shoppers coming from Latvia. This reversed cross-border flow of people suggests that the increasing number of supermarkets brings benefits for Visaginas and its economy, as it creates some employment opportunities and attracts tourist shoppers.

Nevertheless, the flow of Visaginians to Daugavpils will likely continue until more cultural and entertainment facilities appear in Visaginas. Most of the interviewees have claimed that in Visaginas, there is “nothing to do for young people;” not only implying that Visaginas lacks employment opportunities, but also a scarcity of cultural activities and entertainment venues. For instance, Elena expressed that there is a need, at least in the summertime, to have cafés and restaurants that are open until late. According to her, there are many people who come back 48 from abroad during the summertime, and since people want to spend the daytime in nature, there should be “food places” that are open longer than only until 22:00. Elena sees demand for it. She is even considering opening a business; a summertime café with long opening hours. Ideas of establishing private business are not uncommon among young people considering staying in Visaginas, since, as mentioned earlier, the town lacks job opportunities. “If you are a young person living in Visaginas,” as claimed by Elena, “you can be a waitress or a cashier.” Undoubtedly, young people find these employment options unappealing. Leonid similarly to Elena, expressed his considerations:

If you want to live in Visaginas, you need to have a job, but there are not many jobs in Visaginas. There are some, but then there is a question of money, and so on. It means that you need to do something yourself.

This brings us to another issue found in Visaginas; young people often experience bureaucratic obstacles to implementing their ideas. The research participants brought a couple of success stories of young people opening businesses in Visaginas: a nature tourism company called LitWild founded by one local millennial, a pizzeria called Prestoranto, and a brewery called Bear & Boar by another active young Visaginian. However, the interviewees are aware of the struggles these young people faced to achieve their goals. Three types of obstacles were identified: bureaucratic, political, and generational. It is appropriate to mention that the owner of the pizzeria and brewery also had a restaurant Rendez Vous,which closed in November 2020, while this study was conducted. In an article found in the Lithuanian media4, the owner of the restaurant blames the town’s politics and the City Council. According to him, the restaurant did not get a rental extension for the venue as the co-owners of the restaurant belong to the opposition party. The City Council has also been criticised by a couple of the research participants for having ‘outdated ideas’, and for doing things ‘just because they need to be done’ rather than actually caring about the town.

The criticism of the City Council reoccurred during the interviews, together with the idea of the existence of a generational clash. It was particularly noticeable once asked about the satisfaction with Visaginas development of the last decade. Some of the interviewed millennials, such as Igor, consider being lucky to be able to live in a town with unique people and history. Igor sees Visaginas as a town full of potential. However, full of potential that, according to Igor, is imperceptible by the town’s older generation:

4 https://www.delfi.lt/verslas/verslas/visagine-duris-uzveria-suklino-restoranas-koja-pakiso-ne- koronavirusas.d?id=85635345 accessed 02/03/2021 49

This potential can be used only by my generation. Therefore, with the exceptions, I am starting to think that our city will start to develop and flourish when the generation of our parents will leave. Maybe it is not nice for me to talk like this, but a fact is a fact.

According to Michail, the City Council is aiming to make Visaginas identical to other Lithuanian towns. Leonid believes that while Visaginas is standing at the crossroads of opportunities, members of the City Council do not want to take those opportunities since a substantial number of them “just come to work and get their money” rather than make a difference. In the meantime, Igor expressed his disappointment with recently presented development plans for Visaginas and has claimed that the town’s government “does not love Visaginas” since “many” of the members of the City Council “do not even live in Visaginas.” A considerable number of Viaginas City Council workers live in other towns. One of the reasons identified for the lack of local Visaginians working for the City Council is the Lithuanian language barrier. The Russian language is dominant in Visaginas, and while many Visaginians have Lithuanian language skills, it is often hard to compete for the City Council positions with people who come from the towns where the Lithuanian language is dominant, such as Zarasai. One might ask why people who are living in other towns work for the City Council of Visaginas and choose to commute tens of kilometres, rather than move to Visaginas. According to the interviewed millennials, the answer to this is the absence of a private housing area. Lastly, one more factor identified as having an impact on performance, and the “composition” of the City Council is the salaries its workers are earning. Michail explained why he would not like to work for the City Council:

My skills are valued higher in other places. People who work for the City Council are people satisfied with this sort of salary. It is understandable that their competence is lower since their salary is lower.

To summarise the findings of this subchapter, the interviewed millennials do see potential in Visaginas, but they do not like the direction the town is taking. The young people identify the need for cultural and entertainment venues rather than an increased number of supermarkets. However, the older generation does not acknowledge these ideas as it understands Visaginas’s potential differently than the younger generation. The older generation’s ideas are perceived as influencing the decisions the City Council makes. However, the City Council’s performance is criticised not only for “not listening to the youth,” but also for lack of interest in making a real change Visaginas. The research participants expressed disappointment that the number of local people working at Visaginas City Council is considerably small due to the language barrier and 50 small salaries. Therefore, a significant number of members of the City Council are people who live in the other towns. The interviewed millennials are not interested in employment opportunities at the City Council, but they wish for a decrease of political and bureaucratic obstacles to their ideas that they believe would be beneficial for the development of Visaginas.

5.3.2 “Not an Atomic City Anymore” Up until now, Visaginas’s connection to the INPP was the main characterising feature of the town. However, with the decommissioning of the INPP, Visaginas is at a crossroads. What will happen with Visaginas’s “nuclear” image once the INPP is no longer there? The official plan is to memorialise the INPP and Visaginas history by opening a museum and building a sculptural monument in Visaginas. However, would a museum be enough to tell the town’s “nuclear” story, and is there a need to hold on to the “nuclear” past at all? The research findings show that the interviewed millennials give a different meaning to the town’s nuclear image. For some, atomic image is what Visaginas has lost as soon as the INPP’s Unit 2 was shut down. For others, the “nuclear” story and the town’s “atomic” image are a part of its nuclear heritage, and it is something that can be preserved by keeping the INPP-related material objects and memories. Thus, the answers to the question of whether Visaginas should keep or forget its “nuclear” past and what it should do with the town’s “nuclear” image vary among the interviewees. For instance, Vlada expressed the need to move away from the “nuclear” memories and to spend the “energy” and resources on something that would be good the future:

We should not hold onto our “atomic” past. For me, it is the Soviet past. Maybe not everyone would like my opinion. I think to achieve something good in the future, we need to separate from the past, but not to forget it.

Even though Vlada believes that her opinion would not be popular among Visaginians, the research findings show that some of the interviewed millennials have similar ideas. For instance, Natalia explained that even though the nuclear past should be remembered, there is no need to revolve only around the town’s “nuclear” past. According to Natalia, Visaginas has a wide variety of other features that should be promoted, such as acrobatics or its natural resources, namely lakes and forests. Magdalena, who appeared to be confident about her opinion on the role of Visaginas “nuclear” past, explained:

We were an “atomic” town, but now we are not anymore. It is time to think about something next. We are still searching for what could bring value to this town, but we do not have it yet. What we can use – it is nature.

Adrian and Michail, similarly to Vlada and Magdalena, agree that Visaginas is no longer an “atomic” city. However, like the rest of the interviewed millennials, with the exception Adrian, they articulated the importance to open a museum to memorialise the town’s nuclear past and the INPP. Surprisingly, the questions about the potential INPP museum and the need for it were greeted with enthusiasm. It is evident that the urgency of the museum has been widely debated ever since the HBO Chernobyl series has been released. Igor has mentioned that many foreign tourists who came to see the INPP wandered around Visaginas, asking what else is there to see. However, as Igor has claimed, there is nowhere to direct these tourists except to the Culture Centre. Thus, a museum is needed, and the main arguments in support of it include keeping Visaginas’s nuclear history aliveas a tourist attraction. Leonid, Elena, and Irina think that atomic history is what makes Visaginas unique. Hence, it should not be forgotten, and in fact, it should be embraced and used to maintain external national and international interest in the town. Otherwise, as Igor express, without its nuclear “legacy” Visaginas is “just another town.”

On the other hand, Adrian is sceptical about the potential outcome of the museum once it is built. In his opinion, the only appropriate way to show the INPP’s history in a museum format is to preserve the INPP itself and to offer tours to people; something they are currently doing while the plant is being decommissioned. However, as building of the INPP is scheduled to be demolished by 2038, Adrian is unconvinced about the idea of opening a museum for it somewhere in the town, as it would be “boring” and, most likely, would not be interactive. Thus, he believes that a good historical book about the INPP would be a better option than a museum inside the town. Of course, there already is a reasonable number of published books containing the history of Visaginas and the INPP. However, Adrian’s idea is to include “the dark stories, the truth about the nuclear power plant, but also beautiful things” rather than releasing another “statistical” publication. Overall, even if Adrian is the only interviewed millennial that is not convinced by the idea of opening a museum, he still acknowledges the necessity to record and preserve the INPP’s and Visaginas’s histories.

5.3.3 Visions The interviewed millennials hold widely divergent opinions on the prospective future development directions of the town. As briefly mentioned in the previous sub-chapter, one of them is the proposal to utilise Visaginas natural resources, particularly forests and lakes. Currently, LitWild, an ecotourism agency established by one active local millennial that promotes activity holidays in Lithuanian nature, is the main tourism agency organising nature tours in Visaginas for Lithuanian and foreign tourists. I have interviewed the owner of LitWild during the Post-Nuclear Urbanism summer school in Visaginas in early September 2020. While

I am not using the data that I have gathered from that exact interview, I believe, is appropriate to remark that is commonly discussed that LitWild’s plan is to continue providing quality tours for small groups of tourists, rather than focusing on large-scale tourism and big groups. The research participants appeared to admire LitWild’s initiatives and the approach the owner is applying to utilisation of Visaginas’s natural resources. Michail expressed the reasons for his support to LitWild approach:

I like this type of tourism as LitWild is doing. They are not asking for any paths to be built. There are some naturally made paths in the forest, and you can cycle there. You are getting the whole spectrum of emotions from what is already in the forest.

Natalia also agrees that artificial paths should not be laid, as the “charming side of the forest is to walk on desire paths” that have been naturally created by locals. Vlada’s opinion about the absence of “artificially” made paths is similar to the concerns raised by Michail and Natalia. She believes that if the separate paths are made for tourists, then “the forest will no longer be as wild.” Igor’s ideas about the need to adapt Visagnas’s forest for tourism are not that distinct from the other research participants:

If you reshape nature and make it more accessible for tourists, then nature is not the same anymore and is no longer unique. If you make it accessible to tourists, wild nature disappears. Wild nature is exactly why people are coming here.

Nevertheless, the expansion of nature tourism in Visaginas is at its early stage. The City Council’s promotion of Visaginas’s nature tourism is perceived by the interviewed millennials as ineffective, or attractive merely to Lithuanians from the surrounding towns. Thus, some research participants expressed the need to expand nature tourism in a way that would entice people from all over the country, and possibly from abroad. Ever since the HBO Chernobyl series release, local millennials recognised the growing international interest in Visaginas. Foreign tourists are coming to Visaginas to take tours at the INPP and to see the town “frozen in time.” However, before the INPP is demolished in 2038, Visaginas should hasten in finding ways to maintain international attention. Thus, the expanse of nature tourism is seen by the millennials as one of the potential solutions that could shift the flow of tourism from the INPP site to nature of Visaginas.

One more vision for Visaginas is to attract tourism by becoming a spa-town. However, the local millennials’ opinions on the idea of Visaginas becoming a spa-town are divided. Despite that most of the research participants believe the INPP did not have an impact on Visaginas’ natural 53 surroundings, or at least not in any significant way, some believe that the concept of becoming a spa-town does not go match well with a former-nuclear town. Michail thinks that these are utopic ideas because eco-tourism or the concept of a spa-town do not match Visaginas’s “nuclear” story, and nuclear waste is stored nearby. Adrian, on the other hand, thinks that Visaginas becoming a spa-town is one of the possible alternative realities. Meanwhile, Elena’s ideas suggest that the opening of a spa-centre would be beneficial for locals too:

I like the idea to build a spa-centre with pools, spas, saunas, and a gym. The business would be good, and I would also go there sometimes. Now, there is not much to choose from. There is a pool in one side of the town, the gym in the other side of the town. You do not have a good selection.

Albert, another interviewee, similarly thinks that Visaginas’s new direction should benefit locals. He suggests that to create a nice environment for locals, the future of Visaginas should be discussed not only in the context of tourism, but also of culture. Based on his observations on social media, Albert is convinced that local Visaginians want the town for themselves:

They are not happy for people to come here, even though they want tourism, and they want to develop the city.

According to Albert, many people come to Visaginas as tourists, but walking and hiking in the town’s natural environment are not the only things they do. Albert explained that local Visaginians frequently complain about trash tourists tend to leave in the forests. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic brought new potential ideas on how to assist the recovery of the Visaginas economy after the closure of the INPP. One of the visions suggested by Natalia is the long-term rentals of unused apartments for people who are working remotely. According to Natalia, it would be an urban type of tourism with an option to be in the natural environment if desired since it is already blending into the town:

This city is a niche. We could have tourism that includes natural, urbanistic, and creative resources. Maybe those people who do not like to take tours in big groups would find this city as a place to relax, create, get to know other ethnic groups.

Finally, the research participants have been asked to express their opinions on how likely it is that Visaginas will recover. Elena thinks that because the town lacks job opportunities and that the population is decreasing, it is unlikely that Visaginas will be revived. In the meantime, Albert believes that the future of the town is questionable. According to him, the only young people who decide to stay in Visaginas are the ones who want to be close to their ageing parents,

54 or the ones that want to raise their children, but not to establish businesses that would assist with recovery. However, the other interviewed millennials are more hopeful. For instance, Daniil pointed out that Visaginas is slowly reviving itself, but its future will depend on local people and on the City Council. Igor’s ideas are similar to Daniil’s, however, more specific. In Igor’s opinion, Visaginas will not improve in the next twenty years. He believes that only local millennials can make a change. Thus, as Igor stated, “the city will start to develop and flourish when the generation of our parents will leave.”

5.4 Summary The interview data shows that local millennials do not agree with the recent changes in Visaginas’s urban and natural environments. The appearance of the new shopping mall Domino and the international discount supermarket Lidl are criticised for diverting the flow of shoppers from the Sedulina Avenue to the new “shopping hub.” The interviewees name this diversion as the cause for increasing numbers of cars and parking lots in the town’s first and second micro- districts. According to the research participants, the features of the socialist infrastructure in Visaginas should remain unchanged, as they are one out of a few characteristics of the town that make it unique. The presence of the pine forest in the town appears to be a significant factor as to why local millennials choose to stay in Visaginas over relocating to other towns. Meanwhile, the third identified characteristic of Visaginas that appears to be attractive to local millennials is the absence of private houses that, in the eyes of the interviewed millennials, make Visaginas a city and not a town. However, with the necessity to attract investors who are unwilling to live in the apartment blocks, the plans to open an area with private houses are already officially discussed. Thus, while local millennials perceive the construction of new supermarkets and parking lots as replacing the town’s original buildings and green areas as negatively shaping Visaginas’s urban and natural environments, the idea of a separated area for private houses threatens the general millennials’ perceptions of Visaginas as a city. Ultimately, the study findings also show that the local millennials are ready to leave Visaginas nuclear past behind by “locking” it in a museum. It is evident that the INPP’s history is important for the research participants; thus, it must be memorialised. The HBO Chernobyl series triggered international interest and tourism to Visaginas due to its nuclear past and connection to the INPP. However, the interviewed millennials expressed that since the INPP is undergoing decommissioning, Visaginas is no longer a “nuclear” town. Therefore, it should not rely on its nuclear image when it comes to tourism, especially because the INPP will be demolished in less than two decades. Instead, the research participants expressed the need to

55 utilise Visaginas’s vast natural resources and expand nature tourism. Nevertheless, the findings show that the local millennials are critical about the development direction the town is taking. Lack of trust in the local City Council, the generational clash of ideas, and the obstacles such as difficulty of being heard by local authorities are the main reasons identified as to why local millennials are doubtful about the Visaginas future.

CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION This study has two main aims. The first is to analyse the relationship between globalisation influencing Visaginas’s transformations and the local millennials’ perceptions of the town’s natural and urban environments. The second is to explore how local millennials approach Visaginas as a “nuclear” town after the closure of the INPP. The findings show that the local millennials welcome increasing foreign investments, tourism, and other economically beneficial impacts of globalisation in Visaginas. However, the replacement of Soviet-era buildings and children’s playgrounds with modern ones is seen as threatening Visaginas’s urban landscape. The proposal to open an area for private houses to help attract investors is predicted to increase social inequality, disturb urban harmony, and promote car usage. The findings show that nuclear energy is the preferred energy type among many. Thus, disappointment is felt regarding the unfulfilled VNPP’s construction. Many local millennials no longer see Visaginas as a “nuclear” town. Instead, they envision Visaginas as a unique town, surrounded by forests and lakes, that should focus on nature tourism. The study findings illustrate that there are some contradictions in the interviewed millennials’ opinions about Visaginas’s natural environment. While millennials see the expansion of nature tourism as an opportunity that would assist the town’s socioeconomic recovery, many still want local pine forests to remain untouched and uncrowded.

6.1 Perceptions of Visaginas’s Landscape How do the local millennials perceive Visaginas’s landscape? At this point of this thesis, by using the term landscape, I refer to Tim Ingold’s understanding of the landscape, meaning that the landscape in its totality consists of natural and urban environments, and of those who dwell in it. Considering that the natural resources surrounding Visaginas are also found inside of the town, namely pine forest stretching across the entire town, and two lakes accessible from within the town, using Ingold’s approach to the landscape allows me to avoid the complex dichotomy of deciding what is part of Visaginas as urban unit, and what is part of nature. The local Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, through the process of building Visaginas from scratch, are known to have developed a unique relationship with the Visaginas’s landscape. The early history of Visaginas is part of their own personal stories (Klumbytė, 2009). One could suppose that local millennials should not have such a strong attachment, as it is a place they were born and grew up, but not a place that they built with their own hands. Yet, the findings of this research show that the interviewed millennials are strongly attached to the Visaginas’s landscape, although their interactions within it appear to be different from the original settlers.

To discuss how the local millennials perceive Visaginas’s landscape, I note that according to Ingold’s perception theory, humans perceive the environment with their entire bodies, with the skills grown in their organisms, and through practices, and that these perceptions are not only based on memories. The skills required to understand the environment are developed in humans through movement and interaction with their “environment that is filled with the past.” According to the interview data, the local millennials have practised mushroom picking since early childhood. However, the interviewees highlight that their generation is much less focused on what they can collect from the forest floor, even though mushroom picking is widely practiced among the local millennials. This suggests a generational shift of attitudes towards the local environment. The research participants have mentioned that their parents and grandparents were much more into berry picking and fishing, which are not as popular among local millennials. The interviewees expressed the importance of spending time in the forest just to relax, be with yourself, and admire “untouched” nature, rather than to look for what to harvest. This implies that Visaginas’s millennials value a peaceful environment and see local pine forests as place for a brief escape from intense life in our globalised world.

The way local millennials understand Visaginas’s landscape reflects on their everyday and leisure activities. The research participants have named the ability to see pine trees from their apartment windows, and the easy access to Visaginas’s lakes and town centre as among the main reasons why it is better to live in Visaginas than elsewhere. They see Visaginas as a place where they can do activities that they would not be able to do if living in other cities. For instance, playing volleyball at the beach near the town’s centre, renting a boat or water bikes, or simply to have a daily cup of coffee while enjoying natural scenery. The findings show that local millennials do not perceive clear boundaries of Visaginas’s landscape. In the responses to which of Visaginas’s lakes is their favourite and why, many of the interviewees have named the lakes that are located 10-15 kilometres away from Visaginas’s “urban unit.” Moreover, one interviewee noted that it is common among local millennials to drive to one of those lakes just to have a small meal in the car, or to have a conversation with their friends in a different environment. Thus, reflecting on Ingold’s suggested idea of landscape boundaries, the local millennials perceive the lakes that are outside of urban settlement as a continuation of the Visaginas landscape.

The landscape of Visaginas is filled with memories of millennials’ pasts. Referring to Ingold’s idea that to perceive the landscape does not mean to bring up an internal image that is stored in mind, but to carry out an act of remembrance, it is important to note that during interviews, the research participants were moving around and finger pointing through the window to explain

58 what changes Visaginas’s landscape has undergone, and how it is no longer the same as it used to be during their childhoods. The identified changes in the landscape, including new functions of the buildings, appearances of new urban constructions, and the declining numbers of children’s playgrounds that were perceived as a unique integral part of Visaginas’s landscape. Ultimately, for the local millennials, their own perception of Visaginas’s landscape is apparent when they move to other towns, as the features of the landscape are missed.

6.2 Global Forces Global forces have been influencing the Visaginas’s landscape from the very beginning of the town’s establishment. The global and local factors that influenced its transformations include the Chernobyl accident of 1986, the fall of the socialist system, the re-establishment of Lithuania’s independence, Lithuania’s accession the EU, the closure of the INPP, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, and the national referendum on the VNPP construction in 2012 (Stsiapanau, 2018). The decommissioning of the INPP is an ongoing process that continues to affect Visaginas’s landscape and the population as its integral part of it. Due to the unique ethnical composition of Visaginas’s population and the remote location of the town, former INPP workers, are struggling to find new employment locally and are moving out (Baločkaitė, 2010). The interviewed millennials emphasised the lack of jobs available for young, ambitious people. While the increasing number of supermarkets in Visaginas created some employment opportunities, not everyone is willing to take them due to low salaries or inability to grow professionally. The Lithuanian language barrier is an additional factor identified as to why some local millennials would not be able to work for the City Council. In the meantime, the City Council is alleged to be failing to create employment opportunities for local millennials. Nonetheless, I will point out that the growing number of international and national supermarkets indicate globalising modernity Visaginas.

According to Giddens (1990), globalisation comes with modernity that is a driving force for development of modern societies by bringing rapid and significant changes to them (Georgantzas, Katsamakas, & Solowiej, 2010). The critical changes that shaped Visaginas’s society appeared after the closure of the INPP. The de-industrialisation of the INPP and its socioeconomic consequences for Visaginas is often compared to the processes that took place in Lithuania in the early 1990s (Šliavaitė, 2010). Therefore, some feared that Visaginas might become a new Didžiasalis; a mono-industrial town that still has not recovered after its de- industrialisation in 1992. Nevertheless, twelve years after the closure of the INPP, the landscape of Visaginas does not look neglected. The research participants explained that the local City Council is trying to attract new investors by making Visaginas’s landscape more appealing.

Some of the EU funds are named to be used to lay new paths and renovate old buildings. The interviewees explained that the local authorities are also considering planning an area for private houses since the potential investors might find the only option to live in apartment blocks as an obstacle.

However, the interviewed millennials expressed their fears that with these changes, Visaginas would become just another regular Lithuanian town. For instance, the hotel Aukštaitija, which has been often considered the symbol Visaginas, has been demolished, and the new building to accommodate the international discount supermarket Lidl was built instead. Lidl is potentially good for the town as it attracts shoppers from Latvia. However, it appears that the local millennials do not agree with the visual aesthetics of Lidl’s building. Nonetheless, the appearance of Lidl is a sign of global modernity leading to homogenisation, as Lidl branches are found across the entire country. The interview data shows that that the research participants perceive changes in Visaginas as damaging its unique urban image. One of the examples named is a gradual disappearance of Soviet-era children’s playgrounds that are converted into parking lots, replaced with modern ones, or cut off for safety reasons. Not unexpectedly, the local millennials also reject the idea of an area for private houses.

According to the interviewees, an area with private houses would disturb the town’s harmony and movement dynamics as it would mean the appearance of fences and various mismatching styles of buildings. The appearance of this type of segregated urban zone, potentially, would increase social inequality among Visaginians. Furthermore, the absence of a designated area for private houses has been named why some of the interviewed millennials consider Visaginas to be a city and not a town. Overall, based on Floysand (1999), ideas about the double-edged nature of globalisation and local millennials’ opinions about Visaginas’s changing landscape, I argue that the impact of globalisation on Visaginas’s landscape encourages its rejection of homogenisation. The main reason for it would be Visaginians determination to maintain the town’s original architectural features and structures.

6.3 Nuclear Discourse Among Local Millennials and Visaginas’s Future Based on the findings from interviews of this study, it appears that while growing up in Visaginas, the local millennials did not perceive the INPP as a risk to them and the local environment. The main factors identified was their knowledge about nuclear energy, and the safety standards passed from the family members, teachers, and neighbours. Moreover, as one would expect, the research participants expressed that they understood the INPP’s role in Visaginas’s community and for the town’s economy from early childhood. These results are not surprising, as the data of several studies show that the perceived risks related to nuclear 60 reactors and nuclear power decrease with familiarity (Smith & Giere, 2017). For instance, the phenomenon of significant local support has also been noticed in Switzerland, when in November 2016, communities directly around the nuclear power plants voted against the early closure of the nuclear reactors, with 89,7% opposing it, while only 54% of the country overall voted the same (Yurman, 2016).

Similar patterns have been recorded in Lithuania in October 2008 with the results of the referendum on prolonging the work of the INPP until the new nuclear plant was supposed to be built. Voters from Visaginas and Zarasai electoral constituency voted in favour of prolonging the INPP’s work, with 93,7% showing the strongest support for the INPP; this contrasts with other Lithuanian towns where there was less support for the referendum, although the overall nationwide result in favour appeared to be 88,5% (CEC, 2008). In the communities directly around nuclear power plants, the votes supporting the continuation of an NPP’s operation reflect tax incentives and job opportunities (Smith & Giere, 2017). It is important to note that the local millennials, in 2008, were in their teenage years when the referendum on prolonging the INPP’s work took place; some of them were not yet old enough to vote. Unfortunately, the local Visaginians’ support and the support of voters from the other municipalities for the INPP’s continuation did not make a difference. Due to low voter turnout (48,4%), the referendum was deemed as invalid.

The interviewed millennials explained that even after the unsuccessful referendum of 2008, there was still chance for Visaginas to remain a “nuclear” town. The Japanese-American joint enterprise Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy was expected build the VNPP as safer replacement for the INPP (Pipikaitė, 2012). However, Lithuania’s voters rejected the construction of the VNPP in a referendum held in October of 2012 (CEC, 2012). The research participants remember that the plans for the VNPP brought lots of hope for Visaginians. The interviewed millennials were hopeful too. According to the interview data, most of the research participants prefer nuclear energy over other energy types. Nuclear energy has been named a cleaner and more efficient type of energy that is able to satisfy the ever-increasing global energy demand. However, without the construction of the VNPP, Visaginians lost the opportunity to avoid negative consequences of the INPP’s closure, and Visaginas lost its chance to remain a “nuclear” town.

The research findings show that the INPP’s history and its connection to Visaginas have a special meaning for the local millennials. Therefore, they do not want the “nuclear” story of Visaginas to be forgotten. However, since the INPP’s buildings will be demolished by 2038 (INPP DPMU, 2004), the opening of a museum in Visaginas is seen as a sufficient way to memorialise the INPP. While the HBO series Chernobyl attracted international interest to the 61

INPP and Visaginas, and increased tourism flows, the interviewed millennials think that the “nuclear” past should no longer be the main factor attracting tourism. In their opinions, Visaginas should, in a sustainable way, utilise surrounding natural resources and expand nature tourism. However, the findings show that the local millennial’s vision for nature tourism around Visaginas is contradicting itself. The interviewees expressed their wish for Visaginas’s forests to remain untouched, quiet, and clean. Moreover, in the forests, they would not like to see artificial paths. However, these expectations do not meet the potential reality, as the expansion of nature tourism would likely mean more people visiting the forest. Meanwhile, the increased numbers of tourists are likely to have a reasonable demand for accessibility, potentially resulting in laid paths and increased traffic.

6.4 Strengths and Limitations 6.4.1 Strengths When I arrived at Visaginas before starting the conduction of the interviews, I attended Summer School “Post-Nuclear Urbanism 2020” organised by the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism of the European Humanities University (EHU). During a ten-day workshop, we discussed the town’s “post-nuclear” status in relation to the future for Visaginas’s library. Through the interviews with local stakeholders, visits to cultural and educational institutions, the Laboratory of Environmental Monitoring, and the INPP’s Information Centre, I was introduced to Visaginas from social, economic, and historical angles. Thus, I have gained a robust overview of the current debates concerning Visaginas’s future. Therefore, before starting with the conduction of interviews, I felt more confident about my general knowledge of Visaginas, which was previously based only on secondary materials. Moreover, with the guidance of locals, I became familiar with Visaginas’s urban and natural environments in the very first days of my arrival. The ability to orient myself in Visaginas was beneficial during interviewing, because whenever the interviewee was talking about a specific place, I was able to relate objects around it and spontaneously come up with the follow-up questions.

6.4.2 Limitations The interview data for the research has been collected throughout September 2020, when Lithuania, just as most of the other countries of the world, was paralysed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It had an impact on the logistics of the data collection process, as well as on the methodologies of the research. Initially, the plan was to also include the older generation Visaginians’ perception of the town in the context of the decommissioning of the INPP and globalisation impacts. However, it was challenging to meet in person during the pandemic, even with the local millennials. Additionally, vulnerable representatives of the population, such as

62 the elderly, were excluded due to the potential risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Another methodological setback was the inability to perform participant observation. I intended to spend three months in Visaginas, from 1 July until 1 October 2020. However, this was not possible due to Lithuania’s travel restrictions imposed on Iceland, my country of residence, due to the high numbers of COVID-19 cases, which delayed my trip from Iceland to Lithuania. Consequently, the initial ideas considering the methodology of the study were modified, and the aims of the research were adapted. I decided to conduct the research under new circumstances following the recommendations from the World Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania.

During the data collection phase of this study, nine out of eleven scheduled interviews were conducted in the Lithuanian language, and later translated into English, while three interviews were taken originally in the English language. Even though most of Visaginas’s millennials understand and speak at least some level of Lithuanian, the Russian language is the first language for the majority of the population. It would have been an advantage to conduct the interviews in the Russian language. An opportunity for interviewees to express themselves in their native language might have generated more authentic answers (Welch & Piekkari, 2006). Moreover, usage of the mother tongue would have potentially resulted in a reduction of clarification-related follow-up questions. However, due to my insufficient level of Russian, I had to conduct the interviews either in Lithuanian or in English. Nonetheless, most of the interviewed millennials had an excellent command of the Lithuanian language.

CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS First, this study aimed to examine how local millennials perceive Visaginas’s natural and urban environments in the context of globalisation. Second, it aimed to explore how local millennials view Visaginas after the closure of the INPP, while reflecting on the impacts its “nuclear” history have on the town’s development and future. Therefore, to answer these research questions, this study analysed local millennials’ opinions on the changes in Visaginas after the closure of the INPP, and how these changes affect their usual habits in the town. Eleven semi- structured interviews were taken with local millennials in Visaginas. The interviews were conducted between 1 September and 1 October 2020. Emphasis was placed on global forces influencing Visaginas’s transformation. Anthony Giddens’s view of globalisation was used to analyse the global and local events that impacted Visaginas’s fate. For instance, the decommissioning of the INPP is a consequence of global events. Lithuania’s accession to the EU, coupled with worldwide negative public opinion on the type of reactors operating at the INPP in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, were the reasons for the INPP’s closure. This study also approached the impact of globalisation on Visaginas by discussing minor changes in the town, such as the growing number of supermarkets and increasing flow of international tourism in Visaginas.

The boundaries between Visaginas’s urban and natural environments are unclear. The encroaching forest stretches across all three of the town’s micro-districts, and two lakes can be accessed from within Visaginas’s urban area. Therefore, Tim Ingold’s approaches to the landscape and human perception were applied to this study to resolve the unclear boundaries between urban and natural areas. Ingold suggests that human beings are part of the landscape. In its totality, the landscape consists of natural and urban environments, and humans who dwell in it. Consequently, to analyse local millennials’ perception of Visaginas’s natural and urban environments, the term landscape was used as a framing tool. The study finds that local millennials have a strong attachment to the local landscape. Many interviewees expressed that they view it as advantageous to live in Visaginas, as it is well enmeshed with the natural environment; many expressed that this is preferable to moving to another city with less access to nature. The local millennials can effortlessly find time for leisure activities that they would likely struggle to find time for if living in other towns. The pine forest is perceived as an ideal place to relax in a quiet clean environment by engaging in exercise, picking mushrooms, or simply admire the natural surroundings. Moreover, the local lakes and their surroundings are common places to socialise and engage in leisurely activities.

The study findings reveal that local millennials do not agree with several recent trends affecting Visaginas’s urban space. In Visaginas, Soviet-era infrastructural components are gradually being replaced with modern versions. The local millennials see this change as damaging Visaginas’s unique landscape and as a sign of Visaginas’s homogenisation within Lithuania and the modern world. Thus, the proposal to plan an area for private houses for the sake of attracting new investors is widely viewed as unwelcomed.

The absence of private houses is perceived as the reason why, for local millennials, Visaginas is a city, as opposed to just a small town. It is also believed that constructing the area designated for private houses would increase social inequality, as not everyone would be able to build a house there. Many locals are uncomfortable with the potential for social inequality that would come with wealthier people moving into the town, despite the economic benefits that they might provide. Moreover, the changes to Visaginas’s landscape are also understood as a process erasing the signs of Visaginas’s “nuclear” story. Even after the closure of the INPP, the local millennials perceive nuclear energy as a preferred energy type. They are convinced the INPP had no significant impact on Visaginas’s nature. However, while local millennials value the town’s “nuclear” image and appreciate the touristic interest in Visaginas in the context of its nuclear past, they would prefer to shift that image and interest to Visaginas being an excellent choice for nature tourism. However, there are contradictions observed among the local millennials’ attitudes towards Visaginas’s nature tourism ideas. The millennials would like to maintain the pine forests untouched, uncrowded, and without artificially built paths. Nonetheless, they are also interested in expanding nature tourism, which might impact the natural environment if there would be a demand for improved accessibility.

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