From Crimean nuclear power plant now there is little left. There are abandoned and dilapidated buildings on a vast territory. The remains of the workshops are densely covered with grass and trees. Things that had even the slightest value were dug up, torn out and taken away. The nuclear reactor, the shaft lining and the control panel of the nuclear power plant were cut into non-ferrous metal. And if precious metals and the equipment was taken away first, today you can only profit from iron in concrete slabs.
A hundred meters from the reactor workshop, several people in overalls are monotonously dismantling another building. A tractor demolishes a wall and a crane carries a concrete slab to the ground, where workers break it down. They want to get to the fittings hidden inside. All that was left of the concrete workshop was the foundation and a pile of stone chips. The further fate of the still surviving buildings is frightening in its predictability.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The huge gray box of the reactor workshop dominates the territory of the facility. The workshop is as tall as two nine-story buildings and more than 70 meters wide and is built on a six-meter foundation. You can enter it through a huge round hole. The metal door, half a meter thick, had been dragged away long ago. There is no radiation hazard, since nuclear fuel We didn’t have time to deliver. Admission is free, there is no security.
The building accommodates 1,300 rooms, box-like premises of various purposes and, accordingly, sizes. The inside of the boxes is empty and dusty. There are pieces of wires dangling somewhere and trash lying around. Light does not penetrate into the reactor workshop at all. Heavy silence, the belated echo of footsteps and the closed space of the premises thicken the atmosphere. It's unsettling to be here. Random noises are unnerving. Nevertheless, there is no hurry to leave the reactor. This can be described in one phrase: “Terribly interesting.”
“Everything was done slowly in Crimea”
Toropov Vitaly, head of the reactor workshop:— Scientists and specialists have been working on the Crimean nuclear power plant project since 1968. In 1975, a satellite city was founded - Shchelkino, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist. This is the village where nuclear workers and their families were supposed to live. When I arrived in the Leninsky district in June 1981, at the site of the future station, one might say, the wheat was still heading and they were just beginning to dig a foundation pit. I was sent here with Kola Nuclear Power Plant. After all, in Soviet times it was like this: after studying at the university, you start with the lowest positions, then rise higher. No one would immediately appoint me as the head of the workshop.
According to the plan, the power plant was supposed to be operational in four years and ten months. But management was recruited in advance: senior engineers and heads of four main departments. That was the rule. They had to control the receipt of documentation and equipment, monitor the progress of construction and installation work, and gradually recruit personnel. The salary during this period was, of course, small.
It was important for me to understand the geography of the workshop. When the reactor is operating, you have only a few seconds to avoid receiving a lethal dose of radiation. You need to act instantly, know exactly where each valve is located. Even in complete blackout mode, you must be able to work by touch, like submariners.
The reactor was supposed to be launched in 1986, but due to the low pace of construction it was not completed in time. I associate this with the specifics of Crimea. Everything was done slowly here. For example, they managed to build one kindergarten per year. And it seemed like there was money, but the party doubted it and some party members were against it. And then there was an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and construction stalled. A wave of discontent arose. Many believed that Crimea would become the second Chernobyl.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
In 1988, I was sent to Cuba, where I worked for three years at the Juragua nuclear power plant. When I returned, the station had already been closed and torn apart. Its readiness was approximately 90 percent. There was less than a year left for installation and commissioning. If they had managed to launch it, the station would not have been closed. In addition, equipment for two more blocks was stored in warehouses. Moreover, the equipment is high quality, with imported parts. If Vladimir Tansky, director of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, had taken control of the situation and kept the course of events in check, nothing would have been stolen. It was necessary to wait until the hype about Chernobyl died down and became less loud.
We planned to build four reactor units, each of them would produce one million megawatts. One million was enough for Crimea, so the first block was built to stop the transfer of electricity from the mainland. The second block was needed to provide hot water to Feodosia and Kerch, to rid the peninsula of dependence on coal and boiler houses. Using the third block they wanted to desalinate sea water. The whole world is doing this. We wanted to fill Crimea with fresh water and not depend on it. The fourth block is to sell, to the Caucasus, to earn money.
“The Crimean nuclear power plant was mistakenly compared to Chernobyl”
Anatoly Chekhuta, instrumentation and automation master:— I arrived at the station as soon as they gave me the directions: I wanted to get an apartment early. There might not have been time later. My specialization is the maintenance and operation of various control and measuring equipment. Before that, he worked for ten years at a nuclear power plant in Tomsk. It was a secret facility, and in official documents it was listed as a chemical plant. Upon arrival in Shchelkino, my radiation level was 25 roentgens. Five years later it dropped to 15. Now, probably, there is nothing. Although for a long time the level remained stable at 5 roentgens.
One of the problems with the closure of the Crimean nuclear power plant is the general secrecy. There was not enough publicity. In Soviet times, nothing was disclosed: projects, research, data. When environmentalists raised a wave of indignation in 1986, they had no official information, so they could make any assumptions. Even the most ridiculous ones. As an example, in the event of a nuclear power plant accident with a constant southeast wind, radioactive fallout could fall on Foros. Where Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev vacationed in the summer. As a result, a terrible story was made out of this.
The Crimean nuclear power plant was mistakenly compared to Chernobyl. After all, these are two different types reactor. In Chernobyl they used RBMK-1000, in Crimea - VVER-1000. I won't go into details. But it’s like heating water over a fire in a pan without a lid or a closed thermal container. The difference is huge.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The reactor did not produce plutonium, but produced steam. The steam rotated turbines, which produced electricity. If in Chernobyl the RBMK was buried nine floors into the ground, then the Crimean VVER was carefully placed on a small platform. There was a three-stage protection system. The reactor room was covered with a continuous layer of reinforced concrete. IN emergency situation the doors were hermetically sealed and the air was sucked out of the room. During an explosion in a vacuum, the pressure was zero. So a catastrophe could not happen. By the way, the reactor shop building could withstand a direct collision with a jet plane.
The same pressurized water nuclear reactors are used in submarines. Same type, just smaller. In 1988 in the Soviet Union nuclear boats there were 350 pieces. And so far not a single accident has occurred. From the point of view of physics and design, it is a very reliable device.
Another argument of opponents of construction was the lack of research into the location of the nuclear power plant. Specifically, seismic. Allegedly, the reactor was built on the site of a tectonic fault, and with small underground tremors an accident could occur. But later, in 1989, when independent Italian seismologists arrived, they concluded that it was possible to build at least ten reactors, there was no fault. This means that the Soviet specialists were right, and the location was chosen well. The reactor itself was built to withstand a magnitude nine earthquake. But it was already too late, and the station was closed.
50 tons of steam per hour
Andrey Arzhantsev, head of the heat supply section of the central heat supply complex:— TsTPK is a workshop for thermal and underground communications. Under my leadership there was a start-up and reserve boiler room or PRK. To explain it more simply, the start-up and reserve boiler house consists of four boilers that produced 50 tons of steam per hour. Due to this, hot water and heat were supplied to Shchelkino. Now in the city these words have been forgotten - “ hot water", and before it was 75 degrees in the tap.
The main purpose of the PRK is the commissioning of turbines and warming up the reactor. Without it, not a single nuclear power plant is built. But having completed its task, the boiler room is dismantled, and, for example, a gym is created on its basis.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The basic project of the Crimean “atomic” was special. This did not exist anywhere at that time. The turbines had to be cooled sea water. We planned to take water from the Aktash reservoir and use it as a cooling pond. Water came to Aktash from the Sea of Azov. That is, there was an unlimited supply. As a result, the nuclear power plant produced environmentally friendly energy.
After the closure of the nuclear power plant, Shchelkino is gradually dying out. I think there is no need to explain what happens to a city when it loses its main enterprise. The population dropped from 25 thousand to 11. In terms of intellectual potential, Shchelkino was considered the most developed place in Crimea. Here every second person had two higher education. Aerobatics specialists from all over the Soviet Union. And instead of the industrial heart of the peninsula, Shchelkino becomes a resort village. What you see now is a tenth of what the city could have become. There are not even streets here, the houses are simply numbered. Among the attractions are the market, the city council and housing and communal services.
Some nuclear workers leave, others stay. Those who had somewhere to return left. Construction projects are frozen throughout the Union nuclear power plants. There was no work. At least there was an apartment here. Of course, no one was working in their specialty anymore. I currently hold the position of director of a boarding house.
“Crimea needs a nuclear power plant”
Sergey Varavin, senior turbine control engineer, director of KP " Management company"Shchelkinsky Industrial Park":“It’s hard to say who was right and who was wrong then that the Crimean nuclear power plant began to be stolen. The property was redistributed between customers and contractors. About a hundred companies were involved in the construction. Each of them wanted their money back, so the equipment was sold off. In addition, after the collapse of the Union, something was perceived as free, so they carried what they could. There was no high-profile case regarding this, so there is no need to talk about theft. Now it’s impossible to figure it out.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The lands were redistributed among construction participants. Some people refused plots, others left. Part of the territory remained in the hands of owners and tenants, the rest became the property of the city. It is planned to create an industrial park on the site owned by the City Council. The project began to be created in 2007. But due to lack of funding it was never implemented.
Now the project is included in the Federal Target Program for the Development of Industrial Parks in Crimea. One billion 450 thousand rubles will be allocated for the development of the business plan. Our task is to prepare everything for the future investor. Collect all documents, arrange the territory, create infrastructure, and so on. All that remains is to begin construction. The focus is very different: from a gas turbine station to an agricultural complex.
But ask any operator of our nuclear power plant, and he will answer: “Crimea needs a nuclear power plant.”
“All Crimeans would have cancer”
Valery Mitrokhin, poet, prose writer, essayist, member of the Russian Writers' Union:— Immediately after being accepted as a member of the Writers’ Union, I was sent to the construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. There I am writing a book of essays, “Solar Builders.” Three chapters evoke mixed reactions. They are devoted to problems that could arise as a result of the construction of the station. I was accused of undermining the material condition of the country. About a billion rubles have already been spent on the facility. At the exchange rate at that time, one dollar was equal to 80 kopecks, that is, looked from the bottom up. Huge money. Therefore, the nuclear power plant is rightfully considered the most expensive unfinished project in the world.
The book about the sun builders was published in 1984. He refused to throw out the chapters, and for this they stopped publishing me for ten years and did not allow me to appear on regional television and radio.
There were problems, the contractors and nuclear workers knew about them. Everyone was silent. When I started digging deeper and communicating with experts, I came across such a volume of information that it was impossible not to write about it. This threatened disaster. If they had built the station even according to all the parameters, a second Chernobyl would have happened.
First, the hired workers were slacking. Some standards were not followed and mistakes were made. For example, the brand of cement was mixed up. If you look at the buildings today, they are crumbling, the concrete is crumbling. And not much time has passed. I saw with my own eyes how they built the “glass” for the reactor. There is no talk of any tightness. There would be leaks. A microscopic hole would be enough to irradiate the soil within a radius of tens of kilometers.
Photo by Oleg Stonko
The second is the specifics of Crimean seismicity. We are shaken every year. The tremors are small, but they are there. And the tectonic fault exists. It runs from the Feodosia Bay to the Kazantip Bay. The two plates are constantly in contact with each other. While the construction of the power plant was underway, not far from the coast, an island appeared and disappeared in the Sea of Azov. A clear confirmation of my argument. It is not clear why seismologists hid such facts.
The third is cooling the turbines using a reservoir. I'll explain it with my fingers. Water enters the station, cools the turbines, returns to Aktash and again to the station. Constantly circulates and gets dirty. To avoid this, they make an exit to the Sea of Azov. Now the water is constantly renewed. But at what cost? Ten years later, Azov turns into a nuclear swamp. The Sea of Azov is connected to the Black Sea. This means that a little later he will suffer the same fate. Next up is the Mediterranean Sea. Not to mention evaporation and precipitation. By this time, all Crimeans would have cancer.
Having learned about everything, I become one of the founders of the environmental movement. I begin to travel around Crimea with my book. Understand that environmentalists did not inflate the problem from scratch, being afraid of Chernobyl. There were complaints. There were no answers. We wanted to save the peninsula. Of course, the project was good, the reactor was excellent and modern, but the location was chosen in the wrong way. I'm sure of this.
In 1990, the film “Who Needs an Atom” was released. We are talking about the use of nuclear energy in the energy sector. It is noteworthy that one of the fragments of the film is dedicated to the problems of the Crimean nuclear power plant. The passage contains two opposing points of view.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union developed a large-scale nuclear power plant construction program. various types. By the end of the next decade, the European part of the country was supposed to be covered with a new dense nuclear network. The tragedy that happened on April 26, 1986 near the regional center of Chernobyl, Kyiv region, put an end to these plans. Only about half of the grandiose energy projects launched then were completed in one form or another (these include, for example, the Minsk Thermal Power Plant-5, which we talked about a month ago). The remaining “shock communist construction projects” were abandoned forever, becoming an atmospheric monument to the collapse of the USSR and its ambitions. “Ghost nuclear power plants” of the Soviet Union (and not only) - in the review of Onliner.by.
The 1970s were a successful decade for the main country of the socialist camp. High prices for oil and gas, a period of relative warming in relations with the United States and Western Europe, called “détente” and which made it possible to reduce spending on defense industry, helped the Soviet Union implement many ambitious industrial projects. The opposite effect of the rapid development of heavy and energy-intensive industry was the prospect of a shortage of electricity in the country. Power plants operating on traditional fuels, the most powerful hydroelectric power plants of the 1950s-1970s, and the first generation of nuclear power plants could no longer satisfy the increasingly ambitious plans of the Soviet leadership. This problem should have been largely solved by new network nuclear power plants, the construction of which began at the turn of the 1970s-1980s with the prospect of putting the first stages into operation a decade later.
Almost all nuclear power plants were to be implemented according to a standard scheme, which provided for the construction of stations with two, four or six power units with VVER-1000 reactors, the latest development of Soviet nuclear scientists at that time (by the way, a reactor of another type, the RBMK, exploded at the notorious Chernobyl nuclear power plant). The first VVER-1000 was launched in 1980 at the Novovoronezh NPP, then over the next five years about a dozen more similar reactors were put into operation, mainly on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR: the Kalinin, Balakovo, Zaporozhye, Rivne, and South Ukrainian NPPs came into operation.
But the main thing was ahead. The plans included the construction of nuclear power plants in Bashkiria and Tatarstan, in the Crimea and near Kostroma, on Southern Urals and in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine. Nuclear combined heat and power plants (ATES) and nuclear heat supply stations (AST) were supposed to begin heating Minsk and Odessa, Kharkov and Gorky. To one degree or another, work began on each of these facilities, and all of them (with the exception of the Minsk ATPP) became victims of the Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent systemic crisis of the Soviet economy and the collapse of the USSR. The energy complexes remained unfinished, and the satellite cities, which were always built first, found themselves without their city-forming enterprise.
Crimean NPP (Shchelkino, Crimea)
The failed power plant in Crimea is probably the most famous nuclear "abandonment" former USSR. Firstly, the degree of readiness of its first power unit at the time of the suspension of construction was 80%, which means that the main work was nearing completion, the complex was acquiring a finished appearance. Secondly, the very location of the station in a resort area, next to the Sea of Azov, contributed to the popularity of the facility among visitors.
The construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant began at the very end of the 1970s. As usual, the creation of the necessary infrastructure was accompanied by the construction of an atomic city, which initially housed the complex’s builders, who were later replaced by power engineers. This is how the city of Shchelkino appeared on the map of the peninsula, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist Kirill Shchelkin. In 1981, work began on two power units, the first stage of the station. In 1987, after the Chernobyl accident, they were suspended, and two years later they were completely abandoned. At the same time, the readiness of the first power unit was about 80%, the second - 18%. Even in the difficult economic situation in the country, at least the first unit of a nuclear power plant could be completed quite easily, as happened, for example, at the South Ukrainian or Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, where the construction of the next VVER-1000 was completed at the very end of the 1980s.
Instead, the fantastic money already spent was literally buried in the ground. The progressive public, focusing on the resort nature of the region and the periodic earthquakes observed there, stopped construction. Crimea never gained energy independence, and the almost completely finished first power unit began to be stolen. The equipment and structures of the complex were sold for next to nothing or cut into scrap metal.
For example, in 2003, a unique double-tower self-propelled crane K-10000 set off in an unknown direction. The Danish company Kroll Kranes built only 15 of these engineering masterpieces with a lifting capacity of 240 tons, and 13 of them were bought by the Soviet Union just for the new nuclear project. Of all of them, only two K-10000 are now preserved in the territory of the former USSR: one in Russia and one in Ukraine. The rest either work for new owners, mainly in eastern countries, or have disappeared without a trace.
But the Crimean nuclear power plant has become an object of worship for lovers of abandoned architecture and electronic music. In the 1990s, discos of the “Republic of KaZantip” festival were held right in the turbine hall of the unfinished first power unit. Now this building continues to slowly collapse - independently and with human help. Of course, there can be no talk of any completion of the station.
Tatar NPP (Kamskie Polyany, Tatarstan)
The remaining abandoned nuclear construction sites of the former Soviet Union are in a much less complete state of completion. In the early 1980s, construction of a nuclear power plant began in Tatarstan, which was supposed to become an energy donor for large republican industrial giants, commissioned in the previous decade. By April 1990, when work on the site stopped, a settlement of future power engineers grew up 50 kilometers from the city of Nizhnekamsk, which received the romantic name Kamskie Polyany. The first two (out of four planned) units with VVER-1000 reactors were at the stage of constructing machine rooms and reactor rooms.
A number of auxiliary facilities of the station infrastructure and a start-up boiler room, intended to launch the first reactor, were ready. Similar facilities were built first and are present at many “ghost nuclear power plants”.
Unlike the nuclear power plant in Kazantip, local authorities continue to harbor hopes of completing the station. At the same time, it is obvious that almost everything that was already built in the 1980s (except perhaps the boiler room) is useless when resuscitating the project. The inevitable degradation of the “unfinished building” in the absence of proper conservation, its barbaric exploitation with partial dismantling will allow, if desired, only the use of the prepared site and the residents of Kamskie Polyany, who are languishing from the complex vicissitudes of fate.
Bashkir Nuclear Power Plant (Agidel, Bashkortostan)
Just 400 kilometers from the Tat Nuclear Power Plant, around the same years, construction of a nuclear power plant was underway in neighboring Bashkiria. Over the course of a decade, about $800 million in modern equivalent was spent on a project similar to the Crimean and Tatar nuclear power plants (2+2 power units with VVER-1000 reactors). But here they managed to do even less than in Kamskie Polyany.
Only the first power unit was at the stage of constructing the reactor hall and engine room. Only pits were ready for the rest of the “nuclear” part of the complex. The funds were mainly spent on the infrastructure part (construction base, auxiliary workshops, administrative premises, start-up boiler room) and the satellite village of Agidel.
Kostroma NPP (Chistye Bory, Kostroma region)
Approximately the same degree of readiness (a town for power engineers, here called Chistye Bory, a boiler house, a number of auxiliary infrastructure facilities and power units in the initial stage of construction) is now at the Kostroma NPP, whose task was to provide electricity to the Moscow region and the Kostroma region.
The main feature of this plant was that, unlike all other new nuclear power plants of the 1980s, it was planned to use not the VVER-1000, but the RBMK-1500, the next generation of the series, installed, in particular, at Chernobyl. In the late 2000s, plans were voiced to continue construction (with a return to more reliable VVER), but the economic situation in Russia and a number of new projects already started by Rosenergoatom again made the future of the station near Kostroma and its satellite village illusory.
Chigirinskaya NPP (Orbita, Ukraine)
The construction of a nuclear power plant in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine initially began as a large, but quite traditional state district power plant in the early 1970s. The project, however, was difficult to implement, with a number of changes, the last of which was the most dramatic. In 1982, instead of a state district power plant, it was decided to build a nuclear power plant on the same site according to a standard design with four power units. In this case, work stopped at the very first stage - during the construction of a satellite town and a start-up boiler house.
Before the Chernobyl disaster, builders managed to complete the boxes of the first dormitories, a nine-story residential building and a number of public buildings, such as a department store. As such energy complex didn't have time to start. As a result, in the Cherkasy steppes on the banks of the Dnieper, to the delight of the homeless, young people from the neighboring city and visiting “stalkers,” a ghost village with the proud name Orbita appeared, in which only two five-story buildings are inhabited. About 60 families live there.
Kharkov ATPP (Borki, Ukraine)
In addition to traditional nuclear power plants, primarily intended for generating electricity, the same USSR energy program of the 1970s provided for the construction of nuclear power plants of a different type in the European part of the country. In particular, the construction of ATPPs began - nuclear thermal power plants capable of generating, in addition to electrical energy, thermal energy, which could be directed to heating the neighboring large city. In the village of Borki near Kharkov, only a few residential buildings were built.
Odessa ATPP (Teplodar, Ukraine)
The Odessa counterpart was lucky (or maybe not) a little more. The satellite city of Teplodar was built in full, having managed to complete the same ubiquitous start-up boiler room. It never got to the point of constructing the power units, and as a result, the boiler room needed to launch the first reactor is not doing what was intended by the design engineers, Teplodar heats.
Compared to its Ukrainian sisters, the fate of the Minsk ATPP, repurposed as a conventional combined heat and power plant and completed in this form already during the years of independence, looks even more or less enviable.
Voronezh and Gorky AST (Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod, Russia)
The third type in this program, along with nuclear power plants and nuclear power plants, were nuclear heat supply stations, actually “nuclear boiler houses” that generated only thermal energy for the same supply of large cities. In the 1980s, two such stations were almost completely built: near Voronezh and the modern Nizhny Novgorod, - but even here the work was not completed due to the economic crisis and protests of the local population.
The north of the Kerch Peninsula is not the Taurida we are used to imagining - with palaces, ancient ruins, boarding houses and comfortable beaches. The Leninsky district is better known for the Kazantip that raged here. By the way, with the passing of this festival, youth life does not fade away: it is provided by other shocking parties that are held “for old times’ sake.” And fashionable youngsters are also drawn here by the urban landscape – something that earned them the name “city of the future” in the USSR. Our topic is the Crimean nuclear power plant, which remains unfinished.
Where is the station located in Crimea?
On the map of the Crimean east, a huge protrusion between the bays is clearly visible. Its top is , an oval can be seen a little to the south. All that is between them is the village of Shchelkino and its agricultural district. However, part of the suburb has nevertheless become industrial, because there is a partially dismantled nuclear power plant here.
Nuclear power plant on the map of Crimea
Open map
History of the object's appearance
Construction of the most expensive (at that time) project in the field of nuclear energy began in 1975, and its development began in 1968. According to the design capacity, the future enterprise was supposed to take place between the Balakovo and Khmelnytsky stations - it was designed for 2 GW. Since 1984, the installation of a nuclear power plant has been declared a nationwide shock construction project, thanks to which the “satellite city” of Shchelkino appeared. Nowadays it has faded and looks more like a village.
Here, for the first time, such world know-how as a polar crane (a circular cargo bridge unit) and the first solar station in the USSR SES-5 were used. The Crimean nuclear power plant in the Leninsky district was 80% ready when news of the accident at the Chernobyl power plant came and all work was first suspended and then frozen (three years later).
Why didn’t you want to use the object later?! After the organizers of Kazantip, the unfinished building was exploited by extreme clubs offering base jumping (parachute jumping from low altitudes) to everyone. At the end of the 1990s. They decided to sell the industrial site to one of the Swedish energy companies.
On at the moment– in the “new Russian era” - on the territory of the “failed” Crimean nuclear power plant, the disposal of its constituent structures is taking place. Future plans Russian ministry energy – the creation of an industrial park here that is in no way connected with the use of dangerous nuclear fuel. Perhaps this place will become a truly famous landmark of Shchelkino and the entire Crimea.
If you are a connoisseur of the terrible rather than the beautiful, for example, a fan of post-apocalyptic quests or a digger, then you have come to the right place. On the territory of the Shchelkino NPP, visitors will be presented with gloomy urban landscapes, the viewing of which in Ukrainian times cost tourists 50 hryvnia - the guards of the abandoned enterprise acted as guides and cashiers. 
Licensed guards were needed to ensure that the dismantling of the plant took place in an organized manner, and not with the help of an army of “metal hunters.”
So why was the local nuclear power plant never completed? After all, the residents of Crimea desperately needed their own electricity even during the Soviet era, and even more so now. Is it really only because of the fear of a repeat of the Chernobyl tragedy? Discussions in the Russian media are still ongoing. In fact, there were other reasons, for example, problems with object input.
However, those who come here do not bother their heads with boring thoughts related to the economy. For them, the reinforced concrete structures lying side by side and the remaining walls of the main power unit are a location for amazing adventures and a backdrop for “fantastic” photos. Everyone rushes to the turbine department, where from 1996 to 1999. “Republic of Kazantip” held parties under the slogan “Nuclear Party in the Reactor,” and the now fashionable Fyodor Bondarchuk filmed the film “Inhabited Island.” The silhouette of the power unit “lit up” in the frames of other films. It remains to add that travelers should not be afraid of radiation - in the Soviet years they never managed to place raw materials here, although they brought them all the way to Shchelkino.
How to get (get there) to the nuclear power plant?
You can get to the dismantled object without reaching Shchelkino a few kilometers. The final point of the route is the shore of the Aktash reservoir (lake), the road to which starts from garden society"Cherry-96" ().
If a map is your best assistant, then here is the route to the attraction laid out on it:
Open map
Note to tourists
- Address: Shchelkino village, Leninsky district, Crimea, Russia.
- Coordinates: 45.391925, 35.803441.
An abandoned nuclear power plant in Crimea is a bright end to a vacation spent in Shchelkino. Look at the photo of the grandiose landscape, reminiscent of the scenery of a large-scale alien invasion. Overturned modules, the remains of giant units scattered everywhere, gray concrete boxes, a power unit bristling with empty openings - isn’t this the place for an “acid” selfie that you will be proud of?! In conclusion, we also offer a video about it, enjoy watching!
(to the 25th anniversary of the closure of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant)
I remember well one long-ago business trip to the Nikolaev region. Beautiful Bug rapids, happy and carefree faces of local residents. For a minute it suddenly seemed as if time had stopped here. It’s as if the calendar shows not Ukraine in the mid-2000s, but the early 80s. Clean streets, well-kept houses, a park and a city beach on the river. Friendly and smiling people, young mothers walking with strollers and flower beds everywhere. This is how I saw Yuzhno-Ukrainsk. 80% of the local population work at one state enterprise– Nuclear power plant, which generates 17-18 billion kWh of electrical energy throughout the year and covers 96% of the electricity needs of the three southern regions of the country (Nikolaev, Kherson, Odessa)
Large industrial enterprise provides work that is stable and relatively high wages with a full social package not only for residents of the satellite city, but also nearby settlements. Two months later, fate brought me to Shchelkino, a satellite town of the former Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. However, there the picture was completely opposite. Dead streets, shabby facades of houses, lack of evening lighting and a completely broken local House of Culture "Arabat". I never encountered flower beds and working fountains during my two days in this slowly dying city. But there were often drunk men and grumpy women. In their eyes there is complete hopelessness, despondency and anxiety for tomorrow. Shchelkino lives only two months a year - during summer season. Almost every second or third resident of the city considers it a blessing to buy a garage. It doesn't matter that he doesn't have a car. After all, in the summer you can live in the garage and let vacationers into your apartment. Local kulaks are considered not only those who have successfully rented out housing during the season, but also those who have...a boat. After all, she is a real nurse, and in Azov in winter there is so much bearing... It was thanks to the sea that hundreds of families survived here in the hungry 90s.. The two cities, as it turned out, had different fates. But the history of their foundation began simultaneously with the construction of local nuclear power plants and almost at the same time.
Construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant itself began in 1981. However, three years earlier, at the foot of Cape Kazantip, a working settlement for the builders of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant was founded, which, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR of May 11, 1982, was named Shchelkino, thereby perpetuating the name of the outstanding Soviet scientist, three times Hero of Socialist Labor Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin. In 1979, the first three residential buildings were put into operation. And the Crimean NPP itself a year later received the status of a republican (Ukrainian) Komsomol construction site, and on the threshold of perestroika - in 1984 it was already an All-Union shock construction site.
By that time, the city already had 25 thousand inhabitants. However, in 1987, at the stage of 80% completion of the first power unit and 18% of the second, construction of the station was suspended. The main reason is that the site on which they built was considered geologically unstable. In addition, there was a fear of a repeat of last year’s Chernobyl tragedy. . The design capacity of the Shchelkino NPP was 2,000 MW, with a subsequent increase to 4,000 MW (construction of two additional power units) using VVER-1000/320 type reactors.
The planned launch date was 1989. But ironically, it was the summer of this year that went down in history as the time of the final mothballing of the construction site.
If you look in more detail, there were several reasons. Firstly - sad experience Chernobyl. Secondly, there was a powerful earthquake in Armenia in December 1988. 
Then, Crimean seismologists received an urgent task: to identify what the maximum earthquake on the peninsula could be. Scientists wrote a “ten” in the report, and the station construction project was designed only for 8 points on the Richter scale. And finally, the third reason for closing the station is money. The difficulty of financing was already seriously felt in 1987, when large construction projects began to wind down throughout the Union, both in the energy sector and in industry, transport, and urban planning...
In addition, the public actively became involved. During the elections of delegates to the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in the spring of 1989, real battles broke out in the Crimean districts. As a result, doctors and an environmentalist, who actively used anti-nuclear power plant speeches in their election campaigns, won in three districts.
When it became clear that there was no and never would be money to complete construction, there were ideas to create a nuclear power plant on the basis of the Crimean nuclear power plant training center on training dispatchers of nuclear power plants of the USSR Ministry of AtomEnergo. But these ideas were not destined to come true. The union collapsed...
500 million Soviet rubles were spent on the construction of the nuclear power plant in 1984 prices. Approximately another 250 million worth of materials remained in warehouses. The station began to be slowly torn apart for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal. Although in the mid-90s the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant even became a brand for four years. From 1995 to 1999, discos of the “Republic of KaZantip” festival were held in the turbine section of the station under the slogan “Atomic party in the reactor.”
And yet, they tried to return part of the money spent on the main republican construction project. In September 2003, the Property Fund sold a unique Danish crane “Kroll” K-10000, installed for installation nuclear reactor, for 310 thousand hryvnia with an original price of 440 thousand hryvnia. Before its dismantling, the high-altitude crane was used for base jumping. Extreme jumps were carried out from the lower (80 m) and upper (120 m) booms of the crane.
After this, the remaining parts of the Crimean NPP were to be sold: the reactor compartment, the block pumping station, workshop building, cooler at the Aktash reservoir, dam of the Aktash reservoir, supply canal with a water intake tank, oil and diesel station facilities, diesel generator station. It is known that at the beginning of 2005, the Representative Office of the Crimean Property Fund sold the reactor compartment of the Crimean NPP for UAH 1.1 million ($207,000) legal entity, whose name has not been disclosed.
There is evidence that the VVER-1000 reactor, which was never installed in the room prepared for it, was cut into scrap in 2005.
Crimean nuclear power plant today (photo by patteran) 
A little-known fact: the station has an almost identical twin - the abandoned, unfinished Stendal nuclear power plant, 100 km west of Berlin in Germany, built according to the same Soviet project from 1982 to 1990. By the time construction stopped, the readiness of the first power unit was 85%. Its only significant difference from the Crimean NPP is the use of cooling towers for cooling, rather than a reservoir. Currently, the Stendal nuclear power plant is almost completely dismantled. A pulp and paper mill now operates on the territory of the former station; the cooling towers were dismantled in 1994 and 1999. Using excavators and heavy construction equipment The dismantling of the reactor shops is being completed. This is exactly how practical and careful Germans approached the problem of unnecessary long-term construction.
What's in Shchelkino? Empty boxes of abandoned houses, dilapidated production premises, rusty skeletons of metal structures. The nuclear power plant itself was sold for scrap several years ago, and is now one of the Ukrainian construction companies removes the remaining glands from it. From the outside, the station looks even more dilapidated. Taking turns, hunters come to her for equipment, for non-ferrous metals, for various building materials... Photographers, both local and visiting, both professionals and amateurs, regularly visit. On weekends, whole groups of paint and strike ball fans come. The collapsing building of the power unit is an excellent platform for games according to the Stalker scenario. And a few years ago, the filming of the film “Inhabited Island” even worked here. Surprisingly, it was here, in the ruins of the station, that Fyodor Bondarchuk saw a picture of the planet Saraksh.
There are also frequent guests here - lovers of extreme tourism, who also dreamed of wandering around the zone. And a tour of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, unlike Chernobyl, is practically safe. After all, they never managed to deliver nuclear fuel to the peninsula...
Meanwhile, the local station managed to get into the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive power unit in the world. Billions of rubles were thrown down the drain: neither money nor much-needed due to the worsening crisis lately in Crimea there is an energy crisis. The frozen, half-looted station, as a symbol of mismanagement and short-sightedness, will stand on the soil of Kazantip for decades to come.
On the coast of the Azov Sea in Crimea, 75 kilometers west of Kerch, there is a fairly popular resort town of Shchelkino. Vacationers appreciate it for its good ecology, spacious beaches and ideal conditions for families with children. One of the main centers for surfing and paragliding in Crimea is located in Shchelkino. Near the village there is the legendary Cape Kazantip. This is, perhaps, all that this small town in the northeast of the Crimean peninsula is known for.
However, there is another interesting object in Shchelkino, which usually passes by the attention of most ordinary tourists. We are talking about the unfinished and abandoned Crimean nuclear power plant - one of the most curious and mysterious places on the peninsula.
Not all vacationers who come to Shchelkino know that this Azov resort owes its appearance to the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant. Initially, Shchelkino was built as a satellite town of the nuclear power plant and its main population was planned to be made up of the station’s personnel. The name was also chosen taking into account its main purpose - the city was named after the famous nuclear physicist Kirill Shchelkin.
However, fate decreed otherwise and today’s Shchelkino is a small town whose residents live mainly on income from the resort business. But first things first...
In our article today we will talk about the history of the construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant in Shchelkino, and also talk about the prospects for resuming nuclear power on the peninsula.
The idea of building a nuclear power plant in Crimea originated in the political and scientific circles of the Soviet Union in the post-war years. One of the reasons was the notorious resource shortage of the Crimean Peninsula. The appearance of a nuclear power plant in Crimea would solve the problem of energy supply to the region once and for all.
The development of the Crimean NPP project began in the late 60s, and already in 1975 the construction of the station and satellite city began.
The construction of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant was carried out in the traditional USSR style of “all-Union construction”. Many engineers, nuclear physicists and builders came from all over the country to the Azov coast of Crimea. The station in Shchelkino was built according to a standard, already tested design. The same nuclear power plants were previously built in Khmelnitsky, Volgodonsk and the Czech Republic.
It was initially planned that two power units with a capacity of 1 GW each would be built at the Shchelkino nuclear power plant, despite the fact that Crimea’s maximum electricity demand is approximately 1,200 MW. However, already during the construction process, the project was expanded to four power units with a capacity of 1 GW each. You may ask why so many, because, as we have already mentioned, even one 1 GW power unit would be enough for Crimea. However, the plans of the nuclear power plant builders were not limited only to power supply to the peninsula. Thus, with the help of the second power unit it was planned to provide hot water to Feodosia and Kerch. The third power unit was supposed to work on desalination of sea water on an industrial scale in order to rid Crimea of fresh water shortages. And finally, the fourth power unit was supposed to work “for export”, supplying electricity to the Krasnodar Territory and the Caucasus.
Before the construction of the station began, a satellite city was built in the immediate vicinity of it, called Shchelkino. The main construction of the city was completed in 1978. From that time on, the city began to be actively populated. The main backbone of its residents were visitors, while the real intellectual elite of the country came to Shchelkino for permanent residence.
Construction of the nuclear power plant itself began in 1982 - during the relatively prosperous times of Brezhnev's stagnation.
For the needs of a grandiose construction project, a line was extended from the Kerch branch towards Shchelkino railway, along which trains loaded with building materials. By 1987, the main work was completed and the reactor was already scheduled to start up at the first power unit in 1989.
However, the political and economic crisis that began in the country, which led to the fall of the Soviet empire, interfered with the plans of the nuclear scientists. However, it was not the collapse of the USSR that was the main reason for stopping construction. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant played a key role in the closure of the Shchelkino NPP project.
At the very moment when the construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant had already reached the finishing stage, Chernobyl struck. The terrible tragedy that took place in the Kyiv region greatly frightened the world community. Nuclear energy and everything connected with her overnight turned into an object of the closest attention. On this wave, an active campaign began in Crimea against the further construction of a nuclear power plant in Shchelkino. One of the arguments of the activists of this campaign was the fact that Crimea is a seismic zone and in the event of an earthquake, the nuclear monster enclosed in the reactors could get out of control.
However, many experts believe that the hysteria fanned around this topic had no serious basis, since the Crimean and Chernobyl nuclear power plants were fundamentally different, both in the type of reactors used and in the system of protection against emergency situations. Many nuclear engineers claimed and continue to claim that the reactors of the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, from a design point of view, were extremely reliable and safe to use.
However, single voices in defense of the station were drowned in the general chorus of opponents of the construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant. Under pressure from the public and circumstances, in 1987 all work on the construction of the station was stopped, despite the fact that by that time the first power unit of the nuclear power plant was already almost 80% ready. At the time construction was stopped, construction materials worth 250 million Soviet rubles were still stored in warehouses in the Shchelkino area. A huge sum for those times!
Residents of the city of Shchelkino were most disappointed by the decision to mothball the construction site. After all, the refusal to further build the station for many of them meant the collapse of plans and hopes associated with further work. When it became obvious that the Crimean NPP project was finally buried, many packed up and left Shchelkino, where, apart from the failed nuclear power plant, there was no production.
However, despite the decision of part of the population to leave Shchelkino, a significant part of the residents remained. The city was saved...by the sea. Or rather, the fact that Shchelkino is located in a fairly good place on the Azov coast. If not for this factor, Shchelkino would most likely turn into a ghost town.
However, despite its “resort status”, Shchelkino, by and large, is a depressed city with very vague prospects. The city's population has dropped from 25 thousand to 11 and continues to decline.
After construction stopped, the failed nuclear power plant gradually began to fall into disrepair and was stolen. The amount of material resources invested in the Crimean NPP turned out to be so enormous that the most valuable components were sold off and taken away until recently. All the “delicious” things were sold for a lot of money, and local residents and visiting guest performers plundered the station for little things. The reactor, which was cut up for scrap metal in 2005, did not escape a sad fate.
The territory of the failed nuclear power plant itself was chosen by active young people. Thus, in the 90s, the turbine section of the station hosted discos for the famous Kazantip rave festival. And base jumpers regularly jumped from the high booms of the Danish Kroll crane, which was purchased for the installation of a nuclear reactor.
The unfinished Crimean Nuclear Power Plant also managed to serve as a cinematic platform. Episodes of several films were filmed here, the most famous of which was Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film “Inhabited Island”.
Today, the territory of the nuclear power plant and its internal space are quite suitable for filming films based on the plot of the famous computer game"Half Life"
By the way, the territory of the unfinished nuclear power plant in Shchelkino is open to the public, and therefore, if you are a fan of unconventional tourist routes, then you will find it very interesting here. But be careful and extremely attentive - an unfinished man-made facility is fraught with many dangers.
By the way, contrary to numerous rumors, the Crimean nuclear power plant does not pose a radiation hazard, since nuclear fuel was not imported here.
As for the prospects for resuming construction of the Crimean nuclear power plant in Shchelkino, they still remain very vague. Relatively recently, Rosatom indicated its interest in this topic and even held consultations. However, to date, no decisions have been made regarding the revival of the Crimean NPP construction project and, in all likelihood, will no longer be made, due to economic feasibility. According to experts, it is easier and cheaper to build new station, rather than trying to restore the destroyed and looted nuclear power plant in Shchelkino.
An interesting fact: the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant has a twin station. This is the unfinished Stendal nuclear power plant, located west of Berlin in Germany. From 1982 to 1990, it was built in the GDR according to a similar project. Like the nuclear power plant in Shchelkino, its German “sister” was also 85% ready.
That's all, enjoy your holiday in Crimea!
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