Strong interest in Belarusian nuclear power plant during Nuclear Safety Convention review meeting

MINSK, 13 April (BelTA) – Belarus' national report on fulfilling the Convention on Nuclear Safety met strong interest, Head of the Operational Safety Department of the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry (Gosatomnadzor) Diana Rakitskaya mentioned it in BelTA's press center.

Another cycle of the Convention on Nuclear Safety ended with a review meeting of the contracting parties to the convention in the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria in March 2023. Belarus began the cycle as a beginner country in the area of nuclear energy industry and finished it as a country with an operating unit of the nuclear power plant. During the meeting Belarus' national report on fulfilling the convention over the course of six years (from 2017 through 2022) was presented.

As many as 160 questions concerning Belarus' national report were submitted by other countries. Only leaders of the world nuclear energy industry received more questions. A huge number of the questions probed the current state of the first and second units of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, radiation protection, and safety priorities. Gosatomnadzor had teamed up with other government agencies and organizations to prepare a substantial answer to every question and provided all the relevant information. “We presented more detailed answers to the questions than other countries did,” Diana Rakitskaya pointed out.

Progress and results of evaluation missions and peer reviews, which took place in Belarus in the previous six years, also met strong interest. Among other things the questions focused on stress tests and results of fulfilling the national plan prompted by the stress tests. According to Diana Rakitskaya, Lithuania submitted a lot of clarification questions.

“Actually 160 is not the highest number. We received 239 questions last time,” Gosatomnadzor's consultant Oleg Sobolev noted. He also remarked that the attention of the meeting had been quite logically focused on beginner countries – Belarus and the United Arab Emirates. Strong interest was also attributed to the fact that the first unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant was commissioned in the period under review.