And then, on a Wednesday of April 16, as I was exiting the building of the Kaliningrad airport, my mobile phone came to life in my pocket with a friendly, cheerful message: “You know, they’re going to build an NPP here.” Just like I dreamt it that night. That night when I saw the Smolny Cathedral getting demolished. There it was – and there it was no more. And the absolute void expanding where the vista of Suvorovsky Prospect used to gleam with bright lights of a holiday celebration. That night, in that dream, something was lost that had always been and always was to be – while here, in the waking reality, something suddenly loomed that hadn’t been there and shouldn’t be. And strange as it may seem, the sensations both pictures have brought in me are the same: A complete absurdity of the narrative and the heart-wrenching pain of a realisation that you have been deceived.

About that deception: At first, I thought the reason the feeling of being betrayed and slighted was so acute was because when the news had come in, I wasn’t in the city. Kiriyenko had just arrived – and I had just departed. Didn’t see it coming. Missed it completely. But no, of course it’s not it. That very morning, when I learnt from my colleagues that “the eagle is landing,” I didn’t give the news the attention it may have been due. So what he is coming? Let them meet, let them talk. After all, discussions about a new nuclear power plant in our vicinity have been off and on for eighteen months already. But announcing it like that? Sidestepping debates, discussions, and pitch sales to bring us a ready-made decision? One they had apparently been cooking up on the sly, behind our backs? “Deceived” doesn’t even begin to cover it: This makes one feel positively humbugged. Which is why, watching Regional Duma speaker Bulychev on the telly the other day, as he said, giving a syrupy smile to the anchorwoman, that “if he were asked, he would be all for it”, and then seeing the anchorwoman channel that same sugary grin to the audience, as she picked up his thread, saying “well yes, because the most important thing is that the population’s opinion is taken into consideration, or at least asked for,” I feel like a character out of a Kafka novel.

Speaking about absurdity. I can’t say I am that much of an expert on atomic energy – or much of an anti-nuclear activist, for that matter. But there is no denying that for many years, the nuclear – or rather, anti-nuclear – issues have been an important part of my life. I made my first forays into this field in 1997 – and then it grew on me right away. There was Gorleben and Temelin, and the internship at WISE (World Information Service on Energy), and all of those new people and new information. The second floor of the WISE building housed a library called Laka Foundation (it used to be Landelijk Kernenergie Archief – or National Nuclear Energy Archive – and then was renamed into Documentation and Research Centre on Nuclear Energy). This organisation has since 1988 been engaged in the collection, distribution on request and, even more importantly, systematisation and analysis of information on nuclear energy and nuclear arms – and in doing so, it has no match in all of Europe. There, on the second floor, the rooms were lined with bookshelves cramped with volumes and files, there was one computer – and absolute quiet. Over time, I practically moved to the library and started spending most of my working hours there. Mayak and Muslyumovo, Chernobyl and Pripyat, Three Mile Island and Mororua: All of these would come at me like giant waves, rushing out of any randomly opened folder, cutting through the quiet of the reading room – photographs, witnesses’ testimonies, stories told by victims and their loved ones. Mixed up, too, with basic information on the relation between nuclear energy and atomic weapons, on closing the nuclear fuel cycle, or on the real costs of the nuclear energy economy...

And even though my life never became a never-ending carnival of anti-nuclear activism, still that year must have shaped some very firm beliefs. And this is why I can’t figure out, for instance, what drives Kaliningrad’s point man for environmental issues, parliamentarian Alexeyev, to make statements saying that yes, he, too, used to be against nuclear energy himself, but not anymore. Did I miss something here – or am I still dreaming? Has some profound change taken place in the world? An absolutely fool-proof safe reactor has been invented? Or they’ve come up with a way to reprocess nuclear waste into Christmas lights? Or all of the world’s nuclear warheads have been destroyed? Or do we, really, need another Chernobyl to keep us from forgetting the nightmare of the old one?