Atomic crossroads: Poland's nuclear future

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Forty years after Chernobyl, Poland aims to open its first nuclear power plant. Shortly after the disaster, only 30% of Poles supported nuclear power. In 2022, the support hit a record 75%, almost doubling just from the year before, according to public opinion polls. Poland’s nuclear revival attempts to solve several issues at once: it will make Poland more energy-independent, especially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but it will also help the country move away from coal per the EU’s climate policies. That’s according to the officials, but what do people living near the new site think about its construction? Journalist Zuza Nazaruk sets out to discover whether the ghosts of Chernobyl still haunt the areas surrounding the spot picked for the new plant.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:05.6	Your time starts now.
0:07.2	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:09.4	Absolutely right.
0:11.5	So, you might like to know that the BBC makes loads of other podcasts.
0:15.6	Really?
0:16.4	Wow.
0:17.2	Many of them are very funny.
0:19.1	Which I think means...
0:20.1	A hatful of ha-hars. And energy. Even if we do say so ourselves. I agree 100% to that. Find them all on BBC Sounds. Just tell us a joke. Come on. Tell us a joke. Tell us a joke. Come on. Tell us a joke. Just search comedy on BBC Sounds. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in. Beautiful.
0:39.3	Wow.
0:41.2	How's the sea?
0:43.1	The Baltic Sea.
0:45.4	The white sands of Swishava Beach in northern Poland look too pristine to be real.
0:52.1	You can see the line of the tides where the sand just stay slightly more wet.
0:57.0	A five-minute walk brings me into a fragrant grove of pine trees.
1:03.0	The floor is covered with old needles and cones. And suddenly you walk into this completely empty area.
1:14.3	There is a stark line where the trees stop.
1:17.5	Behind me is a dense forest, but ahead of me is an empty space.
1:22.7	Yeah, the construction site looks like a destruction site,
1:26.5	just a massive area of a forest that was completely
1:30.4	cut down.
	...

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