The Gorky Nuclear Heating Plant (GAST) is an unfinished nuclear facility in Nizhny Novgorod Region's Kstovsky District, near the village of Fedyakovo. Construction began in 1982 and was halted in 1990 under public pressure; by then the facility was roughly 80–85% complete. Through the 1990s and 2000s the building was partly leased out, in 2019 it was sold into private ownership, and in 2022 its phased demolition began.[1][2][3]
Construction and Purpose
The site for the plant was chosen near the village of Fedyakovo in Kstovsky District, next to the Royka railway station.[4] The plant was designed as a heat-supply facility rather than a power-generating one: its task was to replace about 300 local boiler houses in the upper part of the city of Gorky and to feed hot water at a temperature of about 150 °C into the city network. It was planned to supply heat to the residential districts of Scherbinki and Verkhniye Pechyory. For this purpose a pipeline network with a total length of about 30 km was laid from the plant to the city — its remains can be seen near the Nizhny Novgorod–Kazan highway.[3] Two power units were planned for the plant.[2] Construction of the main building and the technical and reactor facilities was largely completed: by the end of the 1980s the facility was 85% complete, construction and installation work on the start-up complex of the first power unit was being finished, and staff had been recruited and trained.[3]
Halting of Construction
In 1988, in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, mass rallies took place in Gorky demanding that construction be stopped. At the insistence of the public, a safety assessment of the plant was carried out that same year with the participation of the IAEA, which confirmed that it was completely safe for the city, but the public was not satisfied with this conclusion.[3] In 1990 the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Council of People's Deputies decided to halt construction of GAST, after which the facility was mothballed.[3]
Subsequent History and Sale
From 1991 to 2019, the unfinished station was owned by Nizhny Novgorod Region.[4] In the 2000s, a number of its rooms were leased to various organizations, including the ROOM distillery.[3] Some of the rooms were also handed over to mobile operators to house base-station equipment.[1]
In late 2018, the company Starmet offered the authorities 32–35 million rubles to demolish the building while keeping the site in regional ownership. Later, Vtormet-Volga announced its readiness to buy the property for 50 million rubles in order to build a logistics center for recycling secondary raw materials.[1] In October 2019, the Ministry of Property Relations of Nizhny Novgorod Region put up for auction the eight-story main building with an area of 13,860 sq. m, a 100 m ventilation stack, and a land plot of 32,600 sq. m at a starting price of 85.2 million rubles. Utilities, the access road, and other unfinished structures were not included in the lot.[1][5] According to sources, a private buyer acquired the property for roughly half of the starting price — about 42 million rubles.[5][4]
Demolition and current state
Beginning in 2022, the new owner started dismantling the complex in stages.[2] By the mid-2020s, all that remained of the main structures were the ventilation stack and the brick administrative building; fragments of interiors survive inside the building, while piles of old furniture and construction debris have accumulated outside.[2] On the site of the former station, there is a green area on one side and, on the other, the grounds of a vegetable canning plant.[2]
Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Region Gleb Nikitin called the abandonment of the station's completion "a big mistake." As a partial replacement for the lost plans, the region is working out the construction of a new nuclear power plant; the Russian Ministry of Energy has supported its inclusion in the general scheme for siting electric power facilities in 2027, with commissioning provisionally planned for the late 2030s to early 2040s.[2]
Sources
- Kommersant (Volga Region) — The unfinished Gorky Nuclear Power Plant has been put up for auction for 85.2 million rubles — Kommersant Nizhny Novgorod
- GIPERNN — Nizhny Novgorod residents shown photos of the abandoned nuclear power plant near the village of Fedyakovo
- autotravel-nn.ru — Gorky Nuclear District Heating Plant — The abandoned nuclear power plant near Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- KP — Nizhny Novgorod — The demolition of the unfinished Gorky Nuclear Power Plant filmed from a bird's-eye view
- nn.aif.ru — The unfinished nuclear power plant near Nizhny put up for sale — AiF Nizhny Novgorod