Second Power Unit Launched At BelNPP

The Ministry of Emergency Situations has given the "permission" for the dangerous action.

The Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations (Gosatomnadzor) said it had decided to issue a license to launch the physical startup of the BelNPP second power unit.

"The board of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, based on materials submitted by Gosatomnadzor, decided to issue a license to State Enterprise "Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant" to launch the physical start-up of power unit № 2," reads the statement.

It notes that the commission on licensing activities in the field of atomic energy and ionizing radiation sources considered documents substantiating the safety of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, including expert opinions and the results of a comprehensive inspection of SE "Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant", in order to issue a license to begin the physical start-up of Unit 2.

As Energy Minister Viktar Karankevich previously reported, the readiness of the second unit of the NPP is 95%. Until the end of this year, the unit will be put into operation - specialists will proceed with loading fresh nuclear fuel into the reactor core.

With the commissioning of two power units, according to him, the volume of electricity production at the plant will amount to about 18.5 billion kWh, which will annually replace about 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Belarusian nuclear power plant is being built according to a standard Russian project and will consist of two power units of 1200 MW each. The general contractor is the Atomstroyexport company (part of the Rosatom corporation). The first unit of BelNPP was officially put into commercial operation on June 10, although it was connected to the country's power system slightly earlier - on November 3 last year. Since then it has been turned off at least nine times - the first unit was idle more than 45% of the time.

We remind that thanks to cyber partisans it became known that the BelNPP was launched with thousands of flaws, caused by the hurry and inadequate qualifications of the builders. In July 2021 alone, the BelNPP had 144 defects.

During the first year of operation, the plant was disconnected from the grid at least eight times. According to calculations of the authors of the project, in total, it was idle for about 40% of all its working hours. Belarusian ecologist and economist Tatsiana Novikava estimates that every day of downtime for one reactor at Astravets costs $2.34 million. It turns out that emergency stops at the Belarusian plant cost a total of $348.7 million. The longest shutdown of the plant - almost three months - occurred last summer-autumn.