, Ukraine -- After squandering a half-billion dollars on a nuclear power plant that was never completed, officials in Lenino were determined not to gamble on another risky venture.


So they decided to convert it to the surest bet they could think of in contemporary Ukraine: vodka production.


In a sign of the times in the former Soviet republic, vodka and other spirits are about to be produced and bottled at the sprawling, half-built site near the Azov coast in the eastern part of the Crimean Peninsula. Other goods will be manufactured elsewhere in the plant.


It is all part of an effort by local authorities to make use of the uncompleted site that in 1989 was deemed too dangerous for a nuclear reactor's operation, just one year short of completion.


There had been talk of turning parts into a clothing factory, or even a fish nursery, with specially built aquariums holding all sorts of exotic species.


Today there are nine businesses that have acquired the right to set up shop on the plant's location, not exactly a glorious end to what was supposed to be a prize example of nuclear showmanship.


In Ukraine it is no secret that the power plant has been plagued with controversy since Soviet planners first started building it in 1981 -- right on top of a seismic fault.


The dangerous location was oddly overlooked until planners called a halt to production eight years later. Even more fundamental errors were overlooked in the plant's construction.


"One cannot talk about just one single reason why construction was stopped," said Tatyana Yagish, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian State Atomic Committee.


The two-reactor station was once meant to supply energy to all of Crimea as well as to parts of southern Ukraine. Now only 40 percent of it is involved in energy production, all non-nuclear.


A thermal gas station is currently in operation, while the rest of the plant is being transformed into a labyrinth of oddly assorted factories, under much-disputed ownership.


Ukraine's nuclear energy enthusiasts are not pleased: "Why do we need more vodka? Our stores are already full of vodka," complained the thermal station director Serhei Borzov from his office in the eerily empty administrative building.


On the wall behind Borzov was a calendar with a glossy picture of a nuclear reactor. Attached was a tiny flag commemorating the 15th anniversary of operation at the notorious Chernobyl power station.


"Everything was just abandoned," he said, looking solemnly out the window at an 80-hectare expanse of half-built buildings, rusty cranes and monolithic cement blocks.


On another wall hangs a city plan of "Shcholkino" -- the snazzy high-rise township originally meant to house the nuclear station's 2,000 employees.


It remains just one more reminder of the plant's embarrassing history. Together, the township and the plant cost an estimated $500 million to build.


The regional government recently announced that rental costs for the plant's land will be $71,000 a hectare yearly by 1996. That's an unheard-of sum for land rental in Ukraine and a potential obstacle to the plant's vodka-producing future.