Belarusian nuclear power plant may supply electricity for St Petersburg-Hamburg railway line

MINSK, 22 July (BelTA) – The Belarusian nuclear power plant may supply electricity for the high-speed railway line that will connect St Petersburg and Hamburg, BelTA learned from Deputy State Secretary of the Union State of Belarus and Russia Aleksei Kubrin during the online conference held on 22 July to discuss benefits and prospects of peaceful uses of nuclear energy in Belarus.

The official said: “Since we will have a considerable surplus of energy, we should find energy-intensive projects. Those can include small-scale chemistry, glass production, and new metallurgy. And naturally it's only fitting to talk about things like the high-speed railway line.”

In his words, the project to build the high-speed railway line is being discussed at the highest level in Russia and Belarus. The project provides for enabling high-speed railway service between St Petersburg and Hamburg via Minsk and Warsaw.

“As a matter of principle, if interaction with Western Europe is properly organized, then Belarus can become an optional, main source of electricity along the entire length of operation of the high-speed railway line,” the deputy state secretary of the Union State of Belarus and Russia believes.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is being built near Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast using a Russian design featuring two VVER-1200 reactors with the total output capacity of 2,400MW. Rosatom's engineering division is the general contractor. The first unit is supposed to go online in 2020, with the second one scheduled for launch in 2021.