IAEA-CN-114/5p A Historical Survey of the Ignalina NPP B. Čėsna Laboratory of Nuclear Installation Safety, Lithuanian Energy Institute Kaunas, Lithuania Abstract. In this paper will be present brief information about the Ignalina NPP, information how the Ignalina NPP came into being, about prerequisites for the construction of the Ignalina NPP, about work on constructing the NPP and protests of the academic community, speeding up the construction of the Ignalina NPP with an energy crisis imminent and the debate on termination of Unit 3 construction. 1 Introduction Nuclear power is the basis of Lithuania’s power industry. The Ignalina NPP is a product of the former Soviet Union (Fig. 1). Two reactors of RBMK-1500 type are operational at the Ignalina NPP [1]. This is the most advanced and the most recent version of the RBMK reactor design series (only two reactors of this type have ever been built). The power plant was built as part of the Soviet Union’s North-West Unified Powe System rather than the one, which meets Lithuania’s needs. The first unit of the Ignalina NPP was commissioned in late1983, and the second one in the August of 1987. A total of four units with RBMK-1500 reactors were to be built. However, due to political and safety motives the construction of the third unit was suspended as early as 1989. Fig. 1. Ignalina NPP After Lithuania declared its independence in 1990, the Ignalina NPP was still guarded by the Soviet troops and KGB operatives, and remained under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union until the August of 1991. Supervision was carried out by that country’s regulatory authority, the State Nuclear Power Supervision Inspection (Gosatomnadzor). It was only after the political events of the August of 1991 in Moscow that the Ignalina NPP finally came under the authority of the Lithuanian Republic. It is now controlled administratively by the Lithuanian Ministry of Economy, and its supervision is carried out by the Lithuanian State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate (VATESI). 2 How the Ignalina NPP came into being The material, regarding to establishment of the Ignalina NPP and problems related to it, is collected at the Special Archive of Lithuania (LYA), and the Central State Archive of Lithuania (LCVA). LYA has been using fund No. 1771 of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party (CC LCP) [2] whose documents mostly reflect the activities of the CC LCP in supervising the construction of this all-union facility. The fund contains, among other things, documents of correspondence with different all-union institutions that reflect Moscow’s position on the issue. Resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU) and the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (CM USSR), whose second copies are stored in the archive, are also been used for the present survey. Only the minutes of the sittings that were held in Moscow were sent to Lithuania; the shorthand records and primary material are absent. Nearly all the quoted documents were marked as top secret, which shows that the Ignalina NPP was a facility of extreme importance to both Moscow and Vilnius, as in the 1970s and 1980s most of the Communist Party’s documents were marked simply as secret. Fund No. R-754 [3] of the Managing Department of the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR was also studied in the LCVA. Unfortunately, very few documents related to the researched subject remain in ther LCVA. The files of the 1976-1987 period on construction of the Ignalina NPP and issues related to it are completely absent, although nearly all the resolutions of 1974- 1975 remain. The originals of the bulk of the documents are also missing, only their copies have been preserved. The situation is even worse at the archive of the former State Planning Committee of the LSSR [4], whose documents were not handed over to LCVA after 1963. This archive mostly contains the correspondence with the State Planning Committee of the USSR. The material collected by Laimonas Gryva for the master thesis at Vilnius University The Construction of the Ignalina NPP and its Operation in 1971-1988 [5] has also been used for the present survey. 2.1. Prerequisites for the construction of the Ignalina NPP When after World War II Lithuania became part of the North-West Unified Power System of the USSR, which covered the area from Murmansk to Belarus inclusive, as well as the Kaliningrad Region, the power industry was managed in such way as to take into account not only the local needs but also needs of the Unified System. On September 16, 1971, the CC CPSU and the CM USSR adopted the resolution On Constructing a Nuclear Power Plant in the Area of the North-West Unified Power System in accordance with which a new nuclear power facility of 2 million kW capacity was to be constructed in the area; its first stage of 1 million kW was to be implemented in 1979. The deadline for preparing the technical design was set for October 1973 [6]. The 1979 deadline was unrealistic because it took at least 10 years from designing to commissioning a nuclear power facility. In 1971, the all-union Institute of Design of Thermal Power Facilities drafted proposals for considering the site of the would-be nuclear power plant. Two alternative sites were proposed, at Snudy in the Belarus SSR, near the town of Breslau, and near Lake Drukshiai. The issue was coordinated with the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Medium-Machine Building of the USSR. The latter actually was a ministry of military industry of the Soviet Union disguised beneath this innocent-looking name, and it supervised, among other things, the construction of NPPs. It was decided to construct the nuclear power facility on the southern shore of Lake Drukshiai, as siting the plant at Snudy would have cost 25 million roubles more. Furthermore, geological conditions were extremely adverse at the Belarusian site, where clays of the glacial epoch prevail. Nothing was known about tectonic faults in the Lake Drukshiai area at that time. The decision was made to build reactors of the RBMK type, that were very highly valuated by Soviet powermen. It was possible to replace fuel in these reactors without shutting them down. In 1971, a boosted version of the reactor was developed, which had a capacity of 1.5 million kW, therefore, all-union departments decided to increase the capacity of the Ignalina NPP to 6 million kW [7], i.e. to build four units with such reactors. The attitude of A. Sniechkus, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania, towards the issues of safety of this construction is not clear. The documents remaining in LYA attest that the First Secretary was not indifferent to the issues of construction of the nuclear power plant. M. Pervukhin, a member of the Board of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, on July 14, 1972, sent the conclusions drawn by all-union institutions Regarding the Issue Raised by You about Ensuring Safety of the Power Plant [8] to A. Sniechkus. On November 13, 1972, A. Sniechkus and the Prime Minister of the LSSR J. Maniushis sent an official letter to the State Planning Committee of the Soviet Union [9], in which they noted that they had no objections regarding the construction of the Ignalina NPP, although, simultaneously, they sent remarks [10] regarding the siting of the nuclear facility, which was made by the Geology Administration under the Council of Ministers of the LSSR, and the Lithuanian Scientific Research Institute of Geology. 2.2. Work on constructing the NPP The first sluggish operations of the construction began in 1973. Different designs were coordinated at that time; agreements were made for the supply of building material. On November 29, 1974, the Western Building-Erection Directorate was set up at the construction site, conventionally named Enterprise Post-Box A-7109, that became a structural division of Enterprise Post-Box B-2308 (the construction of the Leningrad NPP) [11]. Practically nothing was constructed until 1976-1977. Preparatory operations for the construction of the Ignalina NPP began in 1974. In the March of 1978, earth-moving operations started at the construction site of Unit 1. They were completed in September. The block of control equipment was commissioned in April. 2.3. Protests of the academic community Construction of the NPP caused immense concern for Lithuania’s scientific community from the very beginning. In the January of 1976 the Presidium of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences decided to set up a nuclear energy commission, consisting of LAS members, as well as representatives of other scientific institutions and organizations. The commission was to establish and maintain contacts with the State Committee of the Use of Nuclear Energy of the USSR, the Directorate of the Ignalina NPP, the designers and builders, as well as all scientific institutions carrying out research and design operations. Soon the commission had to battle with all-union institutions. At the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979 the issue of the final disposal of liquid radioactive waste from the NPP became a hot topic. J. Vilemas, Z. Rudzikas, R. Jasiulionis, L. Ashmantas, B Styro, V. Gudelis, and other scientists from the LAS of the LSSR drew up numerous memos and references, that were submitted to the CC of the CP LSSR and the CM LSSR. It was noted in these documents that the issues of safe disposal of radioactive waste had been given little attention, which resulted in delays in developing methods of safe storage and final disposal of waste.