Belarus to benefit greatly from NPP project

The nuclear power plant (NPP) will give Belarus a lot of advantages, Nikolai Grusha, the Director of the Nuclear Energy Department at the Energy Ministry of Belarus, said during the online conference hosted by the BelTA website on 22 March.

"This is what the estimates say. The estimates were made by Belnipienergoprom, which is the general designer in charge of coordination of the design-budget documentation for the NPP construction project,” the expert said.

Once the Belarusian nuclear power plant is commissioned, the country will be able to save energy up to 5.6 million tonnes of fuel equivalent, which is worth more than $1.7 billion. Other benefits include the reduction in electricity costs ($1010 million per year) and increased profits from sales of products in the power grid ($1022 million per year). The project payback period is about 19 years old.

The nuclear power plant will increase the economic and energy security of Belarus. The country will be ale to replace a significant portion of imported energy resources (about 5.6 million tonnes of fuel equivalent, or almost 5 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year), change the structure of the fuel and energy balance, diversify suppliers and types of fuels in the fuel and energy consumption mix, reduce the cost of electricity.

According to the expert, the NPP will promote economic and social development of the area of its location: enhance living conditions, improve the demographic composition, the educational and cultural level, medical services. The NPP construction orders will raise the technical and technological level of industrial companies of the country and enhance qualifications of the personnel, i.e. enhance production standards.

The experience gained during the NPP construction will enable the country to use industrial and personnel potential for the construction of future nuclear energy facilities both inside the country and abroad.

According to Nikolai Grusha, technical and economic estimates provided by scientists and specialists of Belarus in assessing the necessity of the nuclear energy program proved the appropriateness of the NPP construction. Various scenarios for meeting the forecast deficit in electric capacities suggest that the nuclear facility would reduce the electricity production costs through minimization of expenditure on fuel.

Commissioning of the nuclear energy generation units with the total capacity of about 2 million kW in 2018-2020 is an optimal scenario for Belarus’ energy development. The nuclear power plant will account for approximately 25% of the total electricity production in the country.

"The nuclear station design that Belarus has chosen meets the strictest standards and recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency and boasts improved safety parameters", the expert said. Several such parameters, namely the availability of active and passive safeguards, put the design head and shoulders above foreign analogues.

Apart from that, the Russian design has other advantages such as the identical technical and legal base of Belarus and Russia, the absence of a language barrier, the possibility of getting as many Belarusian enterprises involved in the project as possible. “It is also extremely important that the prototype of the design has positive experience of the operation of the nuclear power plants that have been built using it,” said the official.

Belarusian scientists and specialists have done a lot to analyze and assess the nuclear station designs available on the global market and the companies that implement them, including the Russian state corporation Rosatom, the American-Japanese company Westinghouse-Toshiba, the French-German group AREVA, and designs by Chinese corporations. After thorough consideration of the nuclear station designs the companies offer on the global market of nuclear technologies Belarus chose the Russian design AES-2006 of the three-plus generation.