"Here will be the Latvian SSR NPP!"
Andris Zaļkalns (born 1951, Chairman of the Vērgale Village Council of People's Deputies (1982-1989)) recalls the time when a nuclear power plant was almost built in Akmeņrags.
Due to the border area and the Russians, the Akmesrags side remained very uninhabited, because in the past there were many houses around Rudupi (Rudenieki) and Akmensrags (Radzenieki). People were "eaten" out of these places, they have been described in time by Tālis Vaiders or Tālivaldis Sils (born in 1927 - dead?), In the story "Rudenieki." Five years ago, together with the students, we tried to research and preserve the places and names of the old houses, we made and placed oak plates with the names of the houses in the places of the farms.
A nuclear power plant (NPP) was planned to be built in Akmensrags. In the late 1980s, the issue appeared in the press and the village councils also found out about it. In 1989, when all the events of Chernobyl were freshly remembered, activists from all villages - Saka, Pāvilosta, Medze, Vērgale - came together and protested. On my initiative, together we wrote a letter to the LKPCK (Latvian Communist Party Central Committee) newspaper "Cīņa", motivated not to build a nuclear power plant, because we do not want the Chernobyl disaster to repeat itself, the deportation of 1940 in a very pathetic spirit. At the same time, one Saka resident collected signatures against the construction of the NPP, collected several tens of thousands of signatures. Together we organized a meeting with the program "Good evening!" creative team, it came to Akmensrags lighthouse, journalists E.Inkēns and O.Rubenis, and a cinematographer participated. We climbed into the lighthouse and went to the place where the construction of the NPP was planned. Instead, an oak pole was buried in the ground (I no longer saw him) with the inscription in Russian and Latvian "Here will be the Latvian SSR NPP!" Its place, about 1 km from the lighthouse towards Pāvilosta, on the seashore. The event was already noisy, but it was probably not needed at all, because the USSR collapsed.
Related timeline
Related objects
Akmeņrags Lighthouse and the fate of the "Saratov"
The Akmeņrags Lighthouse is located in Saka parish, 10 kilometres southwest of Pāvilosta. The top of the lighthouse can be reached by a spiral staircase and it offers views of the sea and the surrounding forests. Standing at 37 metres high, the current lighthouse tower was built in 1921, while the previous lighthouse was destroyed during World War I.
The Akmeņrags Lighthouse stands out among other lighthouses in Latvia, as it is located in one of the most dangerous places for sailing in the entire Baltic Sea coast. The signal beam of the lighthouse marks a rocky bank, which extends approximately two nautical miles or 3.7 kilometres into the sea in a north-western direction. The depth of the bank is just over two metres. The location of the lighthouse has remained unchanged, but the coastline has been receding over the years. Although a navigation light has been here since 1879, Akmeņrags has seen several shipwrecks. The most notable occurred in September 1923 when a Latvian steamer named Saratow struck the ground. In 1919, Saratow briefly served as the seat of the Latvian Provisional Government. Akmeņrags used to be home to a border guard post, and buildings of the Soviet Army are can be viewed here.
