Three to four years to train supervisors for Belarusian nuclear power plant

Three to four years is needed to train supervisors of a nuclear power plant, said Anatoly Bondar, Chief Engineer of the enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, during the press conference arranged by BelTA on 11 March.

“For now we invite foreign specialists in order to utilize their experience to train our own personnel later. For instance, it takes 3-4 years to train the personnel to man the main control room using a dedicated standard program. If we borrow specialists in employ of Belarusian power plants, we will be able to rely on the experience of invited foreign specialists to train our own ones before the second power-generating unit goes online,” noted Anatoly Bondar.

He said they primarily invite specialists from Russia because the design the project to build the Belarusian nuclear power plant utilizes is a Russian one and Russian specialists have experience of operating similar power-generating units.

Anatoly Bondar also stated that Ukrainian nuclear industry specialists are also considered for operating the Belarusian nuclear power plant. He reminded that nuclear energy accounts for 48% of Ukraine's energy system. “So we have a neighbor that pays close attention to nuclear energy. The rating of our nuclear power plant in the eyes of Ukrainian specialists is very high. The number of people vying for highly qualified personnel jobs varies from three to five people per job opening. But those are only some of the job openings. And only in the first power-generating unit. We will train Belarusian personnel for the second one,” stressed the Chief Engineer.

Speaking about specialists employed by the Ignalina nuclear power plant, Anatoly Bondar stressed that there are no specific prohibitions but they are experienced in operating the previous generation of reactors. “As far as the design, the principle of operation, all the reactivity effects are concerned, we have totally different reactors. The development of the global nuclear energy industry proceeds along this path,” he added. Therefore, specialists experienced in operating the same type of reactors will be preferred.