Two Reasons To Abandon BelNPP

The Belarusian authorities are not able to add up.

The BelNPP will be launched in a year – according to the latest plans, the first power unit will set to work in February 2019. But there are several reasons why the completion of the country’s main construction does not look like a joyful event, Salidarnasts writes.

The authorities still do not know what to do with the energy generated by the BelNPP

In 2011, Aliaksandr Lukashenka explained his belief in the usefulness of the nuclear power plant construction in Astravets: "We will steer clear of importing electricity and we will supply a significant part of it to foreign markets."

The funny thing is that the first reason became irrelevant even before the launch of the BelNPP. At the end of last year, Energy Minister Uladzimir Patupchyk announced that since 2018, Belarus would completely back off from the import of electricity – it turned out that it could be replaced with country's own resources even without the NPP.

The total electricity consumption amounted to almost 37 billion kWh in Belarus in 2017. Our first nuclear power plant is going to produce about 18 billion kWh.

As for deliveries to foreign markets, a year before the launch of the first power unit, the Belarusian authorities neither have concluded any contracts, nor even have made any agreements. All along of the nuclear power plant construction, our relations with Lithuania have spoiled thus much that it will go to great lengths not to let the Belarusian energy enter the EU countries. But no one seems to need it enough as it is.

Officials are trying desperately and without success to sell the future product to our neighbors. The latest news on this topic is as follows.

In December, Minister Patupchyk expressed his readiness to export electricity to Poland and Ukraine (no reaction was forthcoming). In February, the head of state said at a meeting with Latvian Prime Minister Māris Kučinskis that the BelNPP could "become a domain" of that Baltic country (no reaction was forthcoming).

The authorities, obviously, are at a loss. The Energy Ministry is increasingly voicing the idea that the proficit of electricity will reduce our gas consumption. A firm figure on the benefit of such a step is not reported. At that, Vice Premier Uladzimir Siamashka has voiced a fantastic idea that the excess of energy will be used by Belarusian electric vehicles.

And, obviously, nothing is heard about the plans, when the constructed object will pay off the investments. We remind that for the nuclear power plant construction, the authorities opened a $ 10 billion credit line in Russia.

Nuclear power is not the thing of the future

Last summer, Aliaksandr Lukashenka explained the decision to build the nuclear power plant: "These are the highest technologies. They stand in one row with space technologies, IT-technologies, digital economy – they are all things of the future."

Around the same time, Google's technical director and the well-known technological futurist Ray Kurzweil made a forecast for the near future. Attention: in a decade, in 2028, solar energy will become so cheap and widespread that it will satisfy the entire energy demand of mankind.

Experts are increasingly saying: the world is experiencing an energy revolution – the first since the discovery of atomic energy.

But the Belarusian authorities should not be discouraged: they are not the only ones who have showed themselves be different from all the other world. At the end of last year, Rosatom began construction of a nuclear power plant, similar to the Belarusian one, in the unfortunate Bangladesh.