Third Participatory Workshop

The third NuSPACES Participatory Workshop was held in Visaginas and Vilnius, Lithuania, from 22 to 26 April 2024. It was attended by 20 representatives from academia, nuclear industry, museums and local authorities from Lithuania, Sweden and the UK.

The first day was spent getting to know the town of Visaginas, a Soviet-style ‘atomgrad’ (nuclear town) built in the 1970s as a satellite settlement for the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP). The tour, led by Oksana Denisenko, NuSpaces researcher and cultural producer, offered an understanding of Visaginas’ shifting identities and complex history. The tour ended with a visit to the then emerging Visaginas City Museum. The director, Viktorija Kazlienė, explained the plans for future exhibitions and the themes they would cover including the city life and the nuclear power plant. She also showed off the museum’s extensive collection of mostly everyday objects from local residents.

The day continued at the INPP simulator – a training facility with an exact replica of a second INPP unit control room. The unique nuclear heritage artefact was presented by Erlandas Galaguz, the mayor of Visaginas and a former nuclear power plant operator. The control room simulator is located in a large complex which is currently considered to have the potential to become a science and technology museum – the Energy Centre. The future plans of it were presented by Viktorija Abaravičienė, Head of the Strategic Planning and Investment Management Department of Visaginas Municipality. Finally, the rich day ended with a visit to “Point”, a local art residency that represents the alternative culture of Visaginas and the changing identities of the younger generation.

The following day was spent at the Ignalina NPP, located 10 km from Visaginas. The first stop was a visit to the Interim Storage Facility, guided by Milda Kiškytė, a specialist from the INPP Communication Department. Our group also had an exclusive opportunity to enter the INPP archives, where all operational documents are stored. The participants continued their tour inside the INPP control zone. Dressed in white, the participants entered the reactor hall, the “hot chamber”, the dismantled turbine hall, the control room… The tour ended at the Information Centre, where Ina Daukšienė, a long-time employee of the Communication Department, gave more details about the daily work, history and display of the Information Centre and touched upon its role in the preservation and communication of the nuclear heritage, such as the informal collection of objects from around the power plant, the creation of a virtual 360-degree tour of the power plant.

The second day in Visaginas ended with a public event for the local community. Five museum representatives from Lithuania, Sweden and the UK presented their experiences in dealing with nuclear cultural heritage, from preservation to exhibition.

The next day, the workshop participants visited the Museum of Energy and Technology in Vilnius. Senior guide Žilvinas Mikulėnas gave a detailed tour of each of the museum’s exhibitions, highlighting the newest interactive exhibition, the Transformation Hall. Architecture historian Marija Drėmaitė also presented an exhibition on the industrial development of Vilnius. A special attraction of the visit was the original model of INPP presented by NuSpaces researcher Linara Dovydaitytė. As a special addition to the workshop, artist Vilius Vingras introduced his installation “Atomic Buffet”, showing photographs and his personal collection of objects linked to radioactivity and nuclearity. After the tour, NuSpaces presented the project results and research publications and invited participants to discuss the final report.

The final evening of the workshop was devoted to a public round table discussion on “The legacy of the nuclear industry as cultural heritage”. It brought together representatives from the Museum of Energy and Technology, the Department of Cultural Heritage Protection, Visaginas Municipality, Vilnius University, Ignalina NPP and the NuSpaces team for the first interdisciplinary discussion on this topic in Lithuania.