Research Site: BÁTAAPÁTI

Bátaapáti is a small village in Tolna County in southern Hungary, just over the hill from the village of Ófalu in Baranya County. In 2005, a referendum was held here about hosting the country’s first geological repository for low-and intermediate-level radioactive waste, which was supported by 91 percent of the village’s voting population. This occurred fifteen years after the unprecedented civic protest in Ófalu in the late 1980s, which successfully hindered the plan to build a repository there. One might ask: what led to such overwhelming support in Bátaapáti after such strong resistance in Ófalu? Answers might be found in the distinct histories of the two communities.

Bátaapáti has been struggling with depopulation and out-migration since the postwar period, when the village’s German minority—80 percent of its population at the time—was forcibly displaced to Germany. During the period of state socialism, Bátaapáti was included on the “black list” of villages destined to die out, which was a widespread policy from the central government that impacted small rural communities by denying them funding and building permits. This planning policy especially discriminated against regions with German minority populations as many had supported German nationalism and Nazi Germany during the war. Bátaapáti shared in this fate, and based on accounts of the local community, the 1980s and ’90s were characterized by an everincreasing lack of future possibilities. This is the situation the Public Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (PURAM, established in 1998) stepped into, following the failed attempt by the state socialist regime to build a repository in Ófalu in the late 1980s. Located on the same granite rock formation, Bátaapáti was identified as a potential host for the repository. They were approached with plans for a new underground facility in response to earlier criticism regarding the possible hazards of aboveground storage. The Hungarian Geological Institute began research in the area in 1993, while PURAM launched a proactive information campaign, especially targeting village youth with the organization of video clubs and sports activities and promising compensation funding and job opportunities that would enable the village to thrive again.

Eventually built on the outskirts of the village, the repository transformed a wooded area that had once been a beloved meeting point for the local community into a high-security facility fenced off with barbed wire and watched over by security guards. Many villagers reminisce about summer nights spent by a campfire in the forest that once stood there. A dosimetrist working at the repository even uses an old photo of this spot as his desktop screen saver.

Different temporalities collide, overlap, and interweave in Bátaapáti. The slickly futuristic, sci-fi infused design of the visitors’ center suggests a techno-optimistic attitude toward radioactive waste storage.

A statuette of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners, guards the entrance of the repository’s underground shaft and testifies to the work and knowledge of miners that has become obsolete due to this local industry’s decline but was temporarily reactivated for the construction of the repository. Across the village, new playgrounds and other public infrastructures coexist with the intricately carved wooden columns of the folk architecture of the German minority that decorates traditional houses. Locals are still concerned about out-migration and the aging population. Even though their village is better off than most in the country, there is nothing to keep the youth from moving away. Local politicians complain that compensation funding comes with too many conditions and they cannot actually use it to benefit the community. No one wants to talk too much about the repository, except to affirm that it was the village’s only chance for survival. A LED sign outside the mayor’s office relentlessly flashes with information about radiation levels.