Ministry of Energy On NPP Incident: We Will Tell Nothing So Far

The Belarusian Ministry of Energy is preparing a comment upon the information about the emergency event at the construction site of the Belarusian NPP, which appeared today.

The Ministry’s press-center has informed BelaPAN news agency about this.

“We will tell nothing so far. We are handling this. The information will appear on our official website either today or tomorrow,” — Spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy Zhanna Ziankevich has said.

A number of media have informed that, on July 10, during the testing training installation of the reactor, the 330-tons aggregate was dropped and fell down from the height of 2 to 4 meters. The incident site has been cordoned off and remains under constant reinforced security guard.

The direction of the Belarusian NPP construction has also given no comments.

This is not the first emergency situation at the NPP construction site. We remind, on May 5 the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry handed Belarusian Ambassador Aliaksandr Karol the note due to the “possible incident at the Astravets nuclear power station, located 50 kilometers away from Vilnius”. The reason for this was the information about the collapse of the stands of the building of nuclear service of the NPP under construction, which happened back in mid-April. The information was published on the website of BelSAT TV-channel. The next day, the Ministry of Energy of Belarus reported that on 8 April the defect in the preparatory works had been recorded, and the consequences had been eliminated.

Later, the Lithuanian side informed about another alleged incident, recorded at the site. This information was also not confirmed by the Belarusian side, but this became the reason for handing the second note on June 8.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is being built in Hrodna region, about 20 km from Astravets, under the project elaborated by the Russian company "Atomstroyexport". General designer and contractor is the Russian company JSC "NIAEP" - JSC "Atomstroyexport". The plant will consist of two units with a total capacity of 2,400 MW. Commissioning of the first unit is scheduled for 2018, the second - by July 2020.