Villages Spared a Soviet Nuclear Plant Are Split Over a U.S. One

It appeared to be a typical harvest festival on Poland’s picturesque Baltic coast, with women in traditional dress singing folk songs and local farmers displaying their wares.But among the stalls selling sausages and hams was a more unusual sight: men in white lab coats talking about nuclear radiation (not a problem, they said soothingly), and protesters in T-shirts emblazoned with the message, “No Atoms on the Baltic!”Arguments over atomic technology might seem odd for a village fair celebrating the gathering of crops.But in Choczewo — a district in northern Poland dotted with farms, forests and white-sand beaches — the debate over nuclear energy is very real.It started 40 years ago with an ill-fated Communist-era plan to construct Russian-designed reactors at a nearby lake.

That effort buried a village in concrete and became a lightning rod for anti-Russian sentiment, but, aborted in 1990 by Poland’s first post-Communist government, it never produced electricity.Poland, which has since joined NATO, is trying again.Plans are underway to place three American-made Westinghouse reactors on the Choczewo district’s Baltic shore, just 10 miles from the abandoned ruins of the Soviet plant....