Poland to go nuclear on coast

19th March 2010

© Daniel Dekański The site of the originally planned plant in Zarnowiec Share:

Poland’s first nuclear power plant will be built near the coastal town of Zarnowiec, 59 km northwest of Gdansk, according to a ranking of potential sites released by the government.

Work on a previous nuclear plant near Zarnowiec started during the communist era was halted in 1990. Locals then expressed concerns about the safety of nuclear energy and the Soviet technology used in the designed and construction of the plant.

The completion of the government’s survey of potential sites was officially announced by Hanna Trojanowska, the Deputy Minister of the Economy and the government’s advisor on nuclear energy.  

“Zarnowiec heads the ranking of twenty-eight towns considered to be the best locations for a nuclear plant, followed by Warta-Klempicz and Kopan, which still have a chance to host the second nuclear power station in Poland,” Hanna Trojanowska said at a press conference on Tuesday.

She noted that Zarnowiec was selected because of its proximity to both the sea and a large body of fresh water that could be used to cool the reactors. “Zarnowiec lies close to a lake and there is also a possibility to build a channel which would supply the plant with sea water,” Trojanowska explained.

The location of the finalists near large bodies of water and away from major population centres was high among the criteria for selection, but other factors were key in the decision.

Minster of the Economy Waldemar Pawlak noted that 17 criteria were considered in the point system used in the process to decide where to locate the plant. “In our report, considerations were made in terms of safety, seismology, hydrology, and demographics, he noted.

Local reactions show that the decision has support from communities near proposed sites. Marek Olszewski, the head of the Lubusz commune, where the Warta-Klempicz site is located, said he accepts the decision in spite of early concerns he had about the selection process.

“I am pleased that we have finally finished this rat race. What it most important is that in the end it was decided on the basis of merit. At the outset, this kind of non-nonsense discussion was lacking,” he explained.

In spite of the protests the project is sure to draw, there does not appear to be the kind of local opposition that led to the cancellation of Poland’s atomic power plant projects in the early 1990s. In a survey conducted on behalf of Rzeczpospolita, 59 percent of respondents said they supported the idea of building a nuclear plant near in their commune.

The government hopes to have the reactor operating by 2021 as part of its efforts to meet EU requirements to diversify its energy production in an effort to cut CO2 emissions. Nearly all of Poland’s current power production comes from coal-fired plants that produce large volumes of carbon dioxide.