Inside the Russian town next to a nuclear plant

 In Udomlya, residents fish, swim and raise families just kilometres from one of Russia’s largest nuclear power plants.

The Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant is a four-reactor facility that dominates Udomlya’s skyline and economy.

UDOMLYA:

There is something remarkably ordinary about this small Russian town, about 200km northwest of Moscow.

People fish on the lake. Small houses and gardens line its banks. Children go to school,residents head to work, and in the summer, people swim in the water.

Then you look across the landscape and see four enormous cooling towers.

Udomlya is home to the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant, a four-reactor facility that dominates both the town’s skyline and its economy.

Yet after spending several days here, what struck me was not how different life appeared because of the nuclear plant.

It was how normal everything seemed.

Playgrounds are a common sight in Udomlya town

Kids walking at the park in Udomlya. (FMT pix)

The plant is intertwined with two lakes in the area, including Lake Udomlya, which forms part of its cooling system.

Cooling towers.

Driving past the water during a tour of the plant, a Kalinin employee pointed towards the small houses dotting its bank.

Green neighbourhoods are a familiar site in this Russian town.

“People have their gardens. They grow vegetables and fruit, and they come there for their weekend,” she said.

“They swim in the lake. They water the plants with the water from the lakes.”

She said the water was strictly monitored for radionuclides, temperature and other indicators.

Safety built into everyday life

Living beside a nuclear power plant inevitably raises questions about safety.

At Kalinin, officials said this was addressed through continuous monitoring and making information available to residents.

A representative said a sanitary protection zone surrounds the station, beyond which lies a wider monitoring zone.

“Continuous dosimetric monitoring is carried out within these zones,” he said, adding that checks cover both the natural environment and populated areas.

Measurements are taken manually and through an automated system that tracks radiation dose rates around the plant.

Importantly, residents can see the results themselves.

“The public is provided with information on the current dose rate,” the representative said.

“We have display boards like this in the town, so residents can monitor it themselves.”

The information is also available online.

“Every resident, every person can see the situation right now,” he said.
The claims are those of the plant operator, and a short organised visit cannot independently establish the long-term safety or environmental record of a nuclear facility.

However, the openness of the monitoring was itself noteworthy.

One in four depends on nuclear industry

The relationship between Udomlya and the plant goes much deeper than geography.

Kalinin officials said the station and organisations associated with it provide about 6,000 jobs, roughly 25% of the working-age population of the municipal district.

The plant also works with schools, colleges and universities to build its future workforce.

One young shift supervisor encountered during the plant tour described arriving at Kalinin in 2018 after graduating from Tomsk Polytechnic University in Siberia.

In eight years, he said, he had worked his way through different positions in turbine operations before becoming a shift supervisor.

Away from work, he spoke about ordinary life in Udomlya, its sports facilities, parks, repaired roads and concerts.

It was another reminder of how closely the plant and town have grown together.

Fishing beside the cooling towers

Perhaps the strangest illustration came on Lake Udomlya itself.

Teams from Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Uzbekistan, India and Malaysia competed in a fishing tournament, with the nuclear plant’s cooling towers visible in the distance.

A fishing tournament featuring teams from Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Uzbekistan, India and Malaysia was a highlight of the trip.

Participants fished for pike, zander, perch and channel catfish, with catches measured and recorded before being released back into the water.

Malaysia won, followed by Russia and Hungary.

There was a small twist to the Malaysian victory. Almost every participating country had sent experienced fishermen. Malaysia had not.

The Malaysian team comprised an accountant by training who now works in media and Fairus Farid, a nuclear engineer with the Nuclear Agency of Malaysia.

Neither of us fish, but somehow, we won.

Nuclear engineer Fairuz Farid and the writer were unlikely winners of the fishing tournament.

It was a fun footnote to an event carrying a more serious environmental message.

Plant officials said years of monitoring showed the plant’s impact on its surroundings to be minimal, with one environmental representative pointing to the fishing tournament as something visitors could see for themselves.

A fishing tournament, of course, is not an environmental study. The presence of fish cannot by itself establish the ecological impact of decades of nuclear operations.

Nevertheless, for an outsider, casting a fishing line with nuclear cooling towers on the horizon was almost surreal.

Both Fairuz Fariz (right) and I caught zanders.

For Udomlya, it is simply part of life.

A handheld radiation detector placed beside one of the fish showed 44 nanosieverts per hour, a very low reading.

Despite the presence of the nuclear reactor, radiation levels were remarkably low in Udomlya.

To put that in perspective, radiation is naturally around us all the time, from the soil, rocks and even the buildings we live in. Studies in Kuala Lumpur have recorded natural background radiation at much higher numerical levels.

The measurements use different units, so they cannot be compared directly. However, the point is simple: radiation is not something that exists only near a nuclear plant. We live with small amounts of natural radiation every day.

A different nuclear conversation

This was my second visit to Russia, and it reinforced something I first noticed when I attended World Atomic Week in Moscow last year.

The questions countries ask about nuclear power are very different depending on where they are in their nuclear journey.

What struck me then was that questions about whether nuclear power was safe tended to come from Southeast Asian delegates.

Delegates from countries further along were asking about technology, financing, construction and the next generation of nuclear power.

That does not mean safety concerns have disappeared. Chernobyl and Fukushima remain reminders of what can happen when nuclear systems fail, while waste, cost and emergency preparedness remain legitimate issues.

However, many countries have moved from asking whether the risks can be managed to discussing how nuclear facilities should be built.

Bangladesh is already developing its first nuclear power plant at Rooppur. Egypt is building four reactors at El Dabaa, while Vietnam has revived its nuclear programme and is moving ahead with Ninh Thuan 1.

Malaysia’s move towards nuclear

Malaysia is increasingly entering that conversation too.

Putrajaya has appointed MyPower Corporation as its Nuclear Energy Programme Implementing Organisation to prepare the policy, regulatory and technical foundations for nuclear power.

The energy-security case became stronger after the Middle East crisis and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz exposed the vulnerability of global fuel supplies.

Deputy prime minister Fadillah Yusof said the turmoil strengthened the case for Malaysia to explore nuclear as a stable, low-carbon source of electricity.

The argument also cuts across political lines.

Machang MP Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal described nuclear as a “macroeconomic necessity”.

“Only nuclear power can provide the secure baseload needed to make renewable energy truly viable in the long run,” he told FMT.

Senior economic adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office Nurhisham Hussein was even more direct: “So nuclear is the way to go.”

Udomlya does not settle Malaysia’s nuclear debate, nor should Malaysia simply copy Russia’s model.

What it offers is a glimpse of what happens when nuclear power stops being an abstract national policy and becomes part of everyday life.

Here, the plant provides electricity and thousands of jobs. Its workers send their children to local schools. Residents fish and swim in the surrounding lakes, while safety is continuously monitored and the results are available to the public.

The extraordinary has, over decades, become ordinary.

The nuclear plant may be in Udomlya’s backyard, but for the people who live here, it is simply part of home. - FMT

Azeem Abu Bakar is managing director of MMKtT.