Poland once almost had a nuclear power plant – will it now?

Parking must be in the lawn in front of the forest edge. Then it is another two kilometers of walking, cycling or – in high season – in a golf cart on the sandy path between the pine trees. On the other side of the single dune, the almost white beach and the tame Baltic Sea appear. In late summer, Polish tourists here drink canned beer from beach chairs brought home and children play in the surf. Apart from the lighthouse, a few beach bars and a campsite, the coast here is unexplored.

“We have invested years here in tourism for our region,” says Katarzyna Zacharewicz, sitting at a picnic table in the grounds of her farm and bed and breakfast. “And now we and the beautiful nature have to give way to a dangerous and outdated technology.” Soon the forest will probably be cut down and the narrow beach inaccessible. According to the Polish government, the lack of development on the coast of the municipality of Choczewo and the free cooling water from the sea make this the place to build a nuclear power plant. Ultimately, at least six reactors, with a combined capacity of 6 to 9 gigawatts, should help the nuclear-free Poland – partly – get rid of polluting coal. Before the end of this year, the government is expected to announce whether it will American, French or Korean company awards the construction of the power station that should be operational in 2033.

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There is now a broad consensus that Poland should adapt its so-called energy mix to the 21st century. Now comes more than 70 percent of electricity from coal and 4 million households still use stoves at home. Those who are not concerned about global warming due to CO₂ burning coal still suffers from its air pollution. Moreover, it is becoming unprofitable to excavate coal and lignite. In 2019, President Andrzej Duda said that there are still had coal in Polish soil for two hundred years and “it’s hard not to take advantage of it.” But that stock is deep and in hard-to-reach places. Mines run on subsidies. Until a unilateral Polish embargo earlier this year, the country imported a lot of coal from Russia because it is cheaper there.

“Due to the European Union’s climate policy and the CO emissions tax₂ we have no choice but to close mines and coal plants,” says Bozena Horbaczewska, in a classroom at the Warsaw School of Economics. She teaches there, among other things, about the international energy market. “Poland has no natural gas or hydropower and can never be self-sufficient with solar and wind energy. So we have to invest in nuclear energy,” she says.

Energy security – independent of the weather, hated Russia and ideally allies – is a priority for politicians from right to left. “Current energy prices are a disaster,” said Lukasz Sawicki, an analyst at the Ministry of Climate that specializes in nuclear energy. “But even before the war in Ukraine, nuclear energy was seen as inevitable to achieve our climate goals and keep energy affordable.”

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Plans for the power station in Choczewo were already outlined under the previous, more liberal cabinet. But implementation is slowly getting off the ground. “The ambition to connect the first households or factories to Polish nuclear energy by 2033 is completely unrealistic,” said Joanna Flisowska of the Reform Institute think tank. “If the government is serious about it, it has to make real decisions: a final decision on the location, how much taxpayer money will be spent on it and who will build the plant.”

Flisowska is not against nuclear energy in principle, but she sees the plans mainly as a labyrinth. “This government has been calling for seven years that it will solve our problems with nuclear energy and uses that as a distraction to do nothing about developing sustainable energy, reducing energy consumption and insulating homes.” For example, since 2016 a ban on new onshore wind turbines has been in place. A ban that governing party PiS promised to roll back in March, but she is still waiting for support from parliament for that. Flisowska: “We need solutions that will work in a year, not in fifteen to twenty years.”

It would have been close if Poland had had a nuclear power station for decades. In the 1980s, later than any communist neighbour, one was built in Zarnowiec, 20 kilometers from Choczewo. The carcass is still there. Hides from view by fences, vegetation and security. According to official Sawicki, construction had already cost more than two billion euros when the project was called off in 1990.

After the fall of communism, miners and their unions gained an important voice in the new democracy. In addition, the country’s economic problems were so great, and the loss of heavy industry that used a lot of power was so enormous that the plant was seen as redundant – and even dangerous because of the Chernobyl disaster. The import of nuclear fuel from the Soviet Union was stopped.

Little sod on the dike

The power station in Zarnowiec alone, with a capacity of less than two gigawatts, would be of little use in 2022. “But if we had opened that plant then and expanded our knowledge and skills over the years, we would already have a much larger arsenal of nuclear energy,” says Sawicki. Instead, Poland has stood still for decades.

Critics of the current plans question whether the country is strong enough in negotiations with much more experienced developers and operators of nuclear power plants. Three parties have made a – secret – offer to build the new nuclear power plant. Both supporters and opponents assume that the American proposal will win. The environmental impact assessment has already focused on that scenario. The Polish government would not trust the French and Koreans enough for such a crucial project. “This is much more a political than a financial decision,” says expert Horbaczewska.

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The state would have to become 51 percent owner of the power station, or later power stations, and thus retain control over it. What does help with the tender is that the Polish government does not shy away from megalomaniac projects with public money. Recently, the canal was completed that ensures that ships can avoid the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Cost: almost half a billion euros. Construction should start next year a completely new airport, forty kilometers west of Warsaw. Investment: 50 billion euros. It is unknown how much the nuclear power plant may cost. The state-owned company set up for its development doesn’t even want to reveal its own annual budget. According to Sawicki, that depends on which builder and technology is chosen. The government-affiliated Polish Economic Institute estimates the investment at almost 40 billion euros.

Limit damage

There is also uncertainty about public support. The percentage of the population that state polling agency CBOS declares to be in favor of nuclear energy, has been hovering below 40 percent for a decade. About 50 percent are declared opponents.

There are no reliable polls in Choczewo. The municipality, where more than five thousand people live spread over forty villages, is certainly divided. A visit of a day and conversations with a dozen residents and visitors mainly, but not exclusively, results in negative reactions.

The worst are those of people close to the intended location and those who live off tourism, such as Katarzyna Zacharewicz, a determined woman of 62. She does not understand that such a beautiful area is being sacrificed for a nuclear power plant. “Why are we destroying nature, on land and in the sea, to save the climate,” she says. “We have been hearing for almost fifteen years that a nuclear power plant should be built here, but nothing is happening. The only information we get comes from the television. Such as the news that only people a hundred meters from the construction site are entitled to compensation.” Uncertainty especially plays tricks on her. “We can’t go on with our lives. It makes no sense to invest in the b&b, but it is also unsaleable.”

There are also supporters in her environment. Several villages in Choczewo are not connected to the sewer system. They have been promised that this will finally happen if the building plans go ahead. Investments in the fire service have been promised. And faster internet. The Korean candidate has invested 15,000 euros for a new playground. “My husband’s family consists of four brothers and sisters and they are divided fifty-fifty over the nuclear power plant. They don’t even talk about it anymore.”

Amid that controversy and the endless waiting for a final decision on the plant’s construction, location and supply lines, stands the non-partisan mayor Wieslaw Gebka (66). “As a resident, I am against it. I’m out [de stad] Gdansk moved here for my peace and nature,” he says. “But as mayor, I think we should make the best of it. If that power station does come here, I want to limit the size and damage, including to the infrastructure of roads and railways around it.” He has no illusions that resistance from his villages would stop the construction of national importance.

Employment is not mentioned by him or others as an argument. Although 12,000 construction workers would be needed for the development of the power station and its surroundings, in the end only 860 people will work, says the mayor.

Road worker Janusz Plottke (53) has little expectations, he says, while lighting a cigarette after doing a job for the town hall. His very first job was in the construction of the now abandoned nuclear power plant in Zarnowiec. “I finished the foundation there.” Plottke doesn’t believe that the government is going to put billions in nuclear energy again here on the coast. “More money will be wasted, but in the end it will be of no use to us. I don’t think I can do it.”

Joanna Flisowska of Reform also has a hard head that the nuclear power station will be built. “It’s all drawing board plans so far. Even before the war there was a lack of speed and urgency. Poland is arguing with Brussels over European funds, and its borrowing position has deteriorated. Now we are entering a recession. Is this really what the government wants to spend capital on?”