No critical remarks about construction of Belarusian nuclear power plant

No critical remarks have been voiced regarding the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, BelTA learned from Anatoly Bondar, Chief Engineer of the state enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, on 18 December.

Operations at the construction site are constantly monitored, including by the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry (Gosatomnadzor) and civil engineering oversight agencies. “We have not heard any critical remarks concerning the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant,” stated Anatoly Bondar.

At present construction is in progress at 102 objects at the nuclear power plant construction site. Belarusian construction companies handle about 83% of the work while Russian ones do 17% of the work. The correlation was registered in January-November 2015. One of the main tasks is to build the protective shells on time in order to enable the conditions necessary for installing the reactor vessel. The installation of the reactor vessel of the first power-generating unit is supposed to take place in August 2016.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build an AES-2006 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The Belarusian nuclear power plant will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW). 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.