From Russian Fort to Radioactive Waste Repository in Różan

Monika and I went to Różan interested in two different sides of the same place.

She wanted to understand how Poland’s radioactive-waste repository works today. I was mainly interested in the building it occupies – Fort III, one of the Russian forts built around Różan at the beginning of the twentieth century.

I expected my part of the visit to be mostly about the fort itself: when it was built, what the different parts were for and what happened to it during the wars.

Instead, the question that stayed with me afterwards was much broader.

Why did the Russian Empire need a fort in Różan in the first place?

Following that question took me away from the details of the structure and into something I found much more interesting – the geopolitics and military geography of nineteenth-century Europe.

Why Różan?

The Russians weren’t really defending Różan as a town.

They were defending a crossing of the Narew.

Różan lies on the river around 90 kilometres north-east of Warsaw. Long before the permanent forts appeared, the geography was already there: a town above the Narew, roads approaching the river and a crossing that mattered to anyone trying to move through this part of Mazovia.

To understand why Russia eventually fortified it, I had to go back further than Fort III.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Kingdom of Poland was tied to the Russian Empire but retained its own government, parliament, administration and army.

That changed after the failed November Uprising of 1830-31.

Norman Davies describes what followed not as one simple moment when the Kingdom was suddenly absorbed into Russia, but as a gradual dismantling of its separate institutions. The Polish army and parliament disappeared, military rule followed, and during the following decades Russian administrative control became much stronger.

That matters to Różan because the territory could increasingly be organised as part of Russia’s own western military system.

And it was an awkward territory to defend.

The Polish salient

Russian-controlled Poland projected far westwards from the main body of the Russian Empire.

In military geography, this kind of projection is called a salient – territory extending outward in a way that leaves it vulnerable from more than one direction.

I already knew the shape from historical maps. What I hadn’t properly understood was what that shape meant militarily.

To the north were Prussia and later the German Empire. To the south was Austria and later Austria-Hungary. Russia’s main territory lay farther east.

An enemy didn’t necessarily have to attack straight through the middle. Pressure from different directions could threaten the sides of the salient and the routes connecting it with the rest of the empire.

Once Dr Bogusław Perzyk explained the problem in terms of mobilisation, river barriers and the directions from which enemy armies could approach, the familiar map started to mean something different to me.

Using the rivers

The Russian Empire already had useful defensive features in the landscape.

The Niemen, Biebrza and Narew rivers formed important natural barriers across its western approaches.

That doesn’t mean they formed one continuous fortified wall, or that every kilometre of river was equally difficult to cross.

In fact, the important places were often the exceptions – the places where an army could get across.

Marshes, steep banks or difficult approaches could make long stretches awkward for military movement. A bridge, ford or more accessible section concentrated movement into a much smaller area.

One source I found particularly interesting was Zygmunt Gloger’s Dolinami rzek. Gloger travelled these rivers by rowing boat in the nineteenth century, which immediately appealed to me as a rower.

He wasn’t looking at the Biebrza as a coloured line on a military map. He was moving through the actual landscape at water level.

Near Osowiec he described the Biebrza as difficult to cross for much of its length because of the marshy ground. Around Goniądz and Sośnia, however, both banks were more accessible. Gloger directly connected that exception with roads, bridges, military movement and eventually the construction of Osowiec Fortress.

That helped me understand the principle behind Różan.

The river was an obstacle. The crossing was the weak point.

Russia also needed time

The river explains why Różan mattered.

It doesn’t completely explain the forts.

For that, Perzyk kept returning to another problem: mobilisation.

Russia could field a huge army, but assembling it was slow. The empire covered enormous distances, its railway network was limited compared with its western neighbours, and troops and reservists had farther to travel.

Józef Piłsudski was writing about this problem in 1910 in Gieografja militarna Królestwa Polskiego. He connected the exposed position of the Polish territories with railway capacity, mobilisation and the fortifications along the Narew.

That made Perzyk’s explanation much easier to follow.

Fortifications such as Różan didn’t necessarily have to stop an enemy indefinitely.

They had to help buy time.

A fort wasn’t simply a concrete obstacle. It was part of a timetable.

France complicated the calculation

Russia’s alliance with France added another pressure.

A deeper defensive concentration farther east could make sense for Russia if it needed more time to assemble its forces. France, however, needed Germany to face pressure from the east as well as the west.

The Franco-Russian military agreement expected the two countries to mobilise quickly and put pressure on Germany from different directions.

So Russian planning couldn’t be based only on withdrawing deeper into the empire and waiting.

Its western defences also had to be considered in the context of an ally that expected Russia to act.

That helps explain why Russian thinking about the defence of the Polish territories kept changing around the same period in which Różan was being fortified.

Building the Różan forts

Permanent fortification work around Różan took place in the first years of the twentieth century.

The system included three substantial concrete forts – I, II and III – together with earthworks associated with protecting the crossing.

During the visit, Perzyk explained some of the physical details of Fort III, including the protected well standing separately from the main structure.

There is much more that could be said about the architecture, but those details aren’t really the main story here.

What interested me more was that Russian military thinking was already changing while the Różan forts were being built.

ZUOP’s account says intensive work was under way in 1904, but in 1905 a decision was made to stop further construction. Work that had already been contracted was completed in 1906.

Russian policy later moved further towards abandoning or even demolishing some of the forward fortifications in the Polish territories.

At Różan, though, much of the work had already been done. Fort III remained.

When war reached Różan

The First World War eventually brought the front to Różan in 1915.

Russian troops fell back towards the permanent position as German forces advanced, but the wider military situation was moving against Russia. Różan was abandoned as the front continued eastwards.

The fort didn’t have to be physically destroyed for the position to become impossible to hold.

A strong crossing point could still be abandoned if events elsewhere made defending it no longer useful.

A military town again

After Poland regained independence, Różan remained connected with the military.

The town became associated with infantry training, and Fort III was used as a military store, including for ammunition.

Then, in September 1939, the old Russian forts became useful again.

The Polish defence of the Różan bridgehead relied partly on the existing fortifications. The 115th Infantry Regiment defended the crossing, with its II Battalion responsible for Forts II and III and the Warsaw road.

The old structures were incorporated into a newer field-defence system rather than being used exactly as their Russian builders had intended.

The empire that built the forts was gone.

The crossing of the Narew still mattered.

A completely different problem

After the Second World War, Fort III eventually lost its military purpose.

Its next life came from something that its builders couldn’t possibly have imagined.

In 1958 Poland’s first research reactor, EWA, began operating at Świerk near Otwock. Radioactive isotopes were also being used increasingly in medicine, research and industry.

That created a new practical problem: what to do with the radioactive waste.

Poland needed a central facility for dealing with it.

The first proposal involved Modlin Fortress, but that site was intended for other uses. Other former military locations were then examined, including Dębe and Forts II and III at Różan.

Fort III was selected for several reasons.

It stood away from the centre of town and the main roads, on higher ground outside the flood zone. The site was considered suitable in terms of geology and seismic conditions, the fort was in good technical condition and it had enough capacity.

And then there was the concrete.

Some of Fort III’s walls are up to around 1.8 metres thick. ZUOP identifies that heavy construction as useful shielding against ionising radiation.

The same physical qualities that had once made the fort useful for military protection helped give it a second life.

The location decision for the radioactive-waste facility was made in May 1961, and the repository began operating that year.

What KSOP does today

This was the side of the visit that interested Monika most.

The phrase radioactive waste can sound much more dramatic than some of the actual material involved.

During the visit we were told about some of the ordinary-looking items that can become radioactive waste through medical use – gloves, tubing, needles and other disposable material used during radiotherapy and related procedures.

Medicine isn’t the only source. Radioactive waste also comes from scientific research and industry.

KSOP is Poland’s only radioactive-waste repository. It is used mainly for the final disposal of short-lived low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. Some long-lived waste can also be stored there temporarily while waiting for another disposal solution.

“Short-lived” doesn’t mean that something becomes harmless after 30 years. It is a technical classification based on the half-lives of the radionuclides involved. Their activity falls over successive half-lives rather than disappearing all at once.

The waste is processed before it reaches Różan. ZUOP treats it at its facilities in Otwock, after which conditioned waste is transported to KSOP.

Parts of the old fort are still part of the system.

Waste is stored or disposed of in original fort structures as well as later facilities, and part of the fort’s dry ditch has been adapted for radioactive-waste disposal.

So KSOP isn’t simply a modern facility built on land where an old fort happens to survive.

The fort itself still has a practical role.

Visiting a working repository

That became obvious from the way the visit was organised.

We had to identify ourselves before entering. Photography wasn’t allowed inside the protected site, which is why I came away without the usual collection of photographs I would normally have after visiting an old fort.

The site is monitored both locally and remotely.

Before leaving, we also had to pass through a scanner checking for any traces of radioactive contamination on our clothes.

Nothing was detected.

It was a very different experience from walking around an abandoned fort or museum. Fort III is a historical structure, but it is also still part of a controlled working facility.

Some of the nineteenth-century geopolitics behind this story was probably covered when I was at school.

If it was, it didn’t stick.

What finally made it make sense was starting with one fort beside the Narew and asking why somebody had decided it needed to be there.

Monika had come mainly for the radioactive-waste side.

I had come for the fort.

In the end, both stories met in the same concrete structure.