History
Preparations for the construction began in 1974. Field work began four years later. Unit 1 came online in December 1983, and was closed on December 31, 2004. Unit 2 came online in August 1987 and was closed on December 31, 2009 at 23:00 EET (21:00 UTC). Originally, Unit 2 was scheduled for launch in 1986, but its commissioning was postponed for a year because of the Chernobyl accident. The construction of Unit 3 started in 1985, but was suspended in 1988 and its demolition began in 1989. Its dismantling was completed in 2008. Construction of the Unit 4 never started because of the public backlash against nuclear power following the Chernobyl disaster.
The town of Visaginas was built to accommodate the plant's workers. At the time, the settlements at Visaginas were no more than villages, making it a prominent example of "greenfield investment", a situation when a large town or industrial facility is built in an area with little existing infrastructure. It was sited next to the largest lake in Lithuania, Lake Drūkšiai (part of which lies in neighbouring Belarus) which provided the plant's cooling water. The temperature of the lake has risen by about 3°C (5.4°F), causing eutrophication. The plant's discharges of radionuclides and heavy metals have accumulated in lake waters and sediments.
Its spent fuel was placed in CASTOR and CONSTOR storage casks during the 2000s.
In 2005, Lithuanian authorities told that Russian agent Vladimir Alganov—earlier deported from Poland—had been granted a Lithuanian visa for some reason and he had met managers of Ignalina in 2003.
Read more about this topic: Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)