$470m of Russian loan spent on Belarusian nuclear station construction in 2014

This year as much as $470 million of Russia’s export loan has been spent on building the Belarusian nuclear power plant, BelTA learned from Mikhail Pigulevsky, a leading specialist of the production and technology department of the enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, on 16 December.

A total of $1,047 million has been spent since construction began, pointed out the specialist.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant, which is under construction, is an exemplary facility, an example to follow for the development of nuclear power engineering in the world. Mikhail Pigulevsky remarked that it was the assessment of experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Over 10 IAEA missions visit the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant per annum. The experts provide independent evaluations of the work that has been done. The Belarusian side takes their opinion into account and observes their recommendations, stressed the specialist.

This year the enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant has joined the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). “Which means we are already accepted as an operator of a nuclear power plant,” added Mikhail Pigulevsky.

The Russian side has provided Belarus with a state export loan to the tune of up to $10 billion for the sake of financing 90% of the cost of every contract between the Russian general contractor and the Belarusian customer for the products and services provided by the Russian authorized organization for the sake of building two power-generating units of the nuclear power plant in Belarus.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW). The design AES-2006 has been chosen for building the nuclear power plant. The design is fully compliant with international norms and IAEA recommendations. The Russian merged company OAO NIAEP – ZAO ASE is the general designer and the general contractor of the project.