General file for audits at every stage of Belarusian nuclear station lifecycle

The Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department (Gosatomnadzor) of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry will compile a general file that will include results of the audits carried out at every stage of the lifecycle of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, BelTA learned from Gosatomnadzor’s representatives, who explained Council of Ministers executive order No. 133 of 25 February.

The document was published by the national legal information website on 6 March. The document approves the regulation on organization and actual oversight over the safe construction and commissioning of the Belarusian nuclear power plant.

According to the source, now the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry will be able to collect and accumulate materials of the audits carried out by any agency involved in overseeing the Belarusian nuclear power plant project. In the past the Gosatomnadzor was limited to keeping only results of its own audits.

On the whole, the regulation explains in detail the procedures required to enable the safe construction and commissioning of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, including rights and obligations of the parties involved in the process, requirements for the operator enterprise and oversight agencies, as well as the types and paperwork standards for audits.

Gosatomnadzor representatives pointed out that the document makes provisions for a special type of audits — constant monitoring. It will allow oversight agencies to constantly track safety standards. In the past only the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department had the right to do that.

BelTA reported earlier that Council of Ministers executive order No. 133 was adopted in accordance with Belarus president decree No. 62 of 16 February 2015. The decree was signed for the sake of reaching and maintaining the proper level of safety of the Belarusian nuclear power plant and for the sake of honoring the commitments Belarus has accepted within the framework of the Convention on Nuclear Safety of 17 June 1994.

The decree specifies that control over the construction and commissioning of the nuclear power plant will be exercised by government agencies, including the State Standardization Committee, the Civil Engineering Control and Oversight Department and its specialized inspectorate, state metrological oversight agencies, the Healthcare Ministry, the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and the Emergencies Ministry, including the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department and the Safe Industrial Practices Department. The Emergencies Ministry will be in charge of coordinating the interaction of the auditing agencies.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build an AES-2006 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The power plant will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW). The Russian merged company OAO NIAEP – ZAO ASE is the general designer and the general contractor of the project. In line with the general contract for building the nuclear power plant the first power-generating unit is scheduled for commissioning in 2018, with the second one to go online in 2020.