Belarus in close cooperation with IAEA in NPP construction

The Republic of Belarus is closely cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and not only in what concerns the construction of its first nuclear power plant (NPP), Deputy Director of the Nuclear Energy Department under the Energy Ministry of Belarus Vasily Polyukhovich told an online conference hosted by BelTA on 12 December.

“As for the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, the Energy Ministry has a technical cooperation project with the IAEA in personnel training. The latest IAEA mission was in Belarus in June 2012. It assessed Belarus’ infrastructure in part of the country’s readiness to the construction of the nuclear power plant. According to the mission, our infrastructure is well-developed for the construction of the nuclear power plant. The mission also gave a number of recommendations and took note of some positive practices that can be recommended to other countries,” Vasily Polyukhovich said.

In his words, the IAEA will hold more missions in Belarus throughout the construction of the nuclear power plant.

The IAEA mission that worked in Belarus in June 2012 involved 14 experts from the IAEA Secretariat and the states that have an extensive experience in the field of nuclear energy. The mission worked in line with the IAEA recommendations developed for countries that plan construction of first NPPs.

The mission came to the conclusion that the country has reached the adequate level of nuclear infrastructure development across the majority of 19 points, like the NPP construction site, environmental safety of the facility, NPP integration into the Belarusian energy system, industry participation in the project.

Belarus plans to use the Russian nuclear power plant design AES-2006, which features a water-cooled power reactor VVER-1200, to build a nuclear power plant at the Ostrovets site in Grodno Oblast. The timeline for building the Belarusian nuclear power plant is specified by the general contract. The first power-generating unit is scheduled for commissioning in November 2018.