Is Lithuania secretly building a radioactive waste site for all of Europe? What sources show

Publication date: 2026-06-29

Claim

Social media posts and Kremlin-aligned narratives claim that Lithuania is secretly preparing a facility to import and store radioactive waste from across Europe, creating a risk of environmental disaster.

Verdict

False / misleading.

In brief

The sources checked do not support the claim that Lithuania is building a secret European radioactive waste dump. BECID reports that such posts mix real decommissioning work at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant with a false claim about a secret facility for foreign waste. Official and industry sources describe facilities on the Ignalina NPP site or in Visaginas municipality, not near Kaunas. Lithuania's national report under the Joint Convention states that Article 25 of the Law on Radioactive Waste Management prohibits the import of radioactive waste into Lithuania.

Why this matters

Nuclear safety is a sensitive public issue. That makes it easy to turn technical decommissioning work into a scare story. Readers need to separate verified facts about managing Ignalina's own radioactive waste from unsupported claims about importing radioactive waste from across Europe.

What we checked

We checked three parts of the claim:

• whether there is evidence of a secret facility near Kaunas;

• whether Lithuania permits the import of foreign radioactive waste;

• what is actually being built or operated as part of Ignalina NPP decommissioning.

Evidence

BECID described this story as a disinformation wave targeting Lithuania's nuclear sector. Its report says anonymous social media accounts circulated claims about a secret facility near Kaunas that would allegedly take radioactive waste from Europe. BECID calls these claims false and says the facilities under development are public, announced and connected with the Ignalina NPP site and Visaginas municipality.

World Nuclear News reported that Lithuania's nuclear regulator, VATESI, issued permits for radioactive waste management facilities connected with Ignalina NPP. The article describes their purpose as retrieval, sorting, conditioning, storage and transport of waste accumulated during the plant's operation or generated during decommissioning. That does not support the claim that the facilities are meant to receive waste from other countries.

The European Parliamentary Research Service briefing on the Ignalina decommissioning assistance programme says the programme helps Lithuania manage the radiological safety challenges of decommissioning the plant. It lists dismantling, decontamination, waste from decommissioning and safe management of legacy waste. It also notes that work may continue until 2049, while spent fuel and radioactive waste disposal in a deep geological repository remains Lithuania's responsibility and is not funded by that EU programme.

Lithuania's national report under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, according to the available search excerpt and VATESI document description, cites Article 25 of the Law on Radioactive Waste Management: importing radioactive waste into Lithuania is prohibited. This directly contradicts the claim that Lithuania is preparing to import radioactive waste from all over Europe.

Debunk.org has documented a similar pro-Kremlin pattern before: presenting the closed Ignalina NPP as a bigger ecological threat than the Belarusian nuclear plant in Astravets. Debunk.org linked that narrative to attempts to deflect attention from safety questions around Astravets and to discredit Lithuania's energy policy.

What remains unknown

We did not check every individual social media post that repeated the narrative. This open-source check is also not a technical safety audit of the waste facilities. But the central parts of the claim, a secret site near Kaunas and imports of radioactive waste from across Europe, are not supported by the sources checked.

Conclusion

The claim that Lithuania is secretly building a radioactive waste facility for all of Europe is not supported. The available sources show a different process: Lithuania is decommissioning Ignalina NPP, building and operating facilities for waste connected with that plant, and doing so under national regulation. The narrative about a secret European dump and environmental disaster misleads the audience.

Sources

• BECID: HOT REPORT: Disinformation Targeting Lithuania's Nuclear Safety: https://becid.ut.ee/hot-report-a-new-wave-of-lies-against-lithuanian-nuclear-facilities-what-is-being-built-near-the-ignalina-npp-and-what-the-kremlin-aims-for

• World Nuclear News: Lithuanian regulator issues waste management permits: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Lithuanian-regulator-issues-waste-management-permi

• European Parliamentary Research Service: Nuclear decommissioning assistance programme of the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2026/782642/EPRS_BRI(2026)782642_EN.pdf

• VATESI: Lithuanian National Report under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, 2024: https://vatesi.lrv.lt/public/canonical/1723461994/2113/7th_National_Report_Lithuania2024.pdf

• Debunk.org: Kremlin media claims closed Ignalina NPP to be a bigger ecological threat than the one in Astravets: https://www.debunk.org/kremlin-media-claims-closed-ignalina-npp-to-be-a-bigger-ecological-threat-than-the-one-in-astravets

Corrections and updates

No corrections at publication time. If new official documents appear about Ignalina radioactive waste facilities or the future deep geological repository site, this article should be updated.