New Rosatom head visits Belarusian nuclear power plant construction site

 Director General of the Russian state nuclear industry corporation Rosatom Alexei Likhachev visited the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant on 9 November, BelTA learned from the Rosatom website.

Several Belarusian government officials were present during the visit. Those included Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Vladimir Semashko, Energy Minister Vladimir Potupchik, Deputy Energy Minister Mikhail Mikhadyuk, and Architecture and Construction Minister Anatoly Cherny. The Russian side was represented by Rosatom First Deputy Director General for Operations Management Alexander Lokshin and head of the Atomstroyexport (ASE) group of companies Valery Limarenko. Members of the delegation were made familiar with the Belarusian nuclear power plant construction progress and went on a tour of the construction site.

The construction of the first and second power-generating units of the Belarusian nuclear power plant proceeds simultaneously and at a high pace. Atomstroyexport is the general contractor in the project to build the Belarusian nuclear power plant. The head of the ASE group noted that the high construction pace had been secured by new technologies and management instruments. “They are effectively used not only by Russian companies but Belarusian ones as well. Productive efficiency has been considerably improved. The Belarusian construction site is a very important facility for the ASE group. We understand our responsibility before the Belarusian side and therefore we try to work in full compliance with the schedule,” stressed Valery Limarenko.

About 5,000 people are employed for construction and installation operations at the site. Belarusian companies perform about 70% of the work while Russian ones take care of the remaining 30%. The power-generating units are ready for operations to install heat exchange and electrical components.

The new Rosatom head praised the organizational standards of the construction project as well as smooth interaction of Belarusian and Russian construction companies.

Alexei Likhachev noted: “The joint work of Russian and Belarusian specialists to build the nuclear power plant contributes to the expansion of Russian-Belarusian economic cooperation. It will surely benefit our nations because nuclear power engineering enables conditions conducive to the development of science and technology, the assimilation of high technologies and the training of highly qualified specialists. Belarus will get a powerful power plant that will be as safe as possible and will fully comply with all the post-Fukushima requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is particularly important that it is a reference project. In October an innovative VVER-1200 power-generating unit of the Novovoronezh nuclear power plant reached 100% output capacity and is now being prepared for commercial operation. It is the world’s first unit of the three-plus generation. We are implementing a project featuring a reactor unit of the same kind in Belarus.”

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build a VVER-1200 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The BelNPP will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW).