IAEA training for Belarusian nuclear physicists in Russian Tomsk

Belarusian nuclear physics specialists together with colleagues from other countries will take part in a ten-day training course in the Russian city of Tomsk in April. The training will be arranged in line with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s program on physical protection within the framework of new nuclear energy programs, representatives of the Russian state corporation Rosatom told BelTA.

The training course will involve 22 specialists from 13 countries that are about to start advancing their national nuclear energy programs. Apart from Belarus those are Vietnam, Ghana, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Libya, Lithuania, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Turkey, and Croatia. The training will be carried out by experts from Germany, Russia, and the USA. The training will take place at premises of the Innovative Education Center of the Physics and Technology Institute of the Tomsk Polytechnic University. The university has been chosen thanks to the globally recognized achievements in the development of educational programs in the area of physical protection, accounting and control of nuclear and radioactive materials.

The innovative education center of the Tomsk Polytechnic University specializes in the development of scientific research and advanced training of elite specialists and teams of the planet’s top professionals in the area of nuclear power engineering, the nuclear fuel cycle, safe treatment of radioactive waste and irradiated nuclear fuel, security and counteraction of terrorism. The partners include the state corporation Rosatom, the IAEA, the Technical University of Munich, and the USA Department of Energy.

A Russian design has been chosen to build a nuclear power plant in Belarus. The installation will meet all the national requirements and IAEA recommendations. The Belarusian nuclear station design relies on the AES-2006 design developed by the Saint Petersburg-based R&D and design institute Atomenergoproject. The AES-2006 design is now being used to build the second Leningrad nuclear power plant and the Baltic nuclear power plant.

The Belarusian nuclear station will have two energy-generating units with the total output of up to 2,400MW. The general contractor is the Russian company OAO NIAEP – ZAO Atomstroyexport. The first energy-generating unit is scheduled to go online in 2018.