Rosatom vows timely construction of Belarusian nuclear station

The Russian company Rosatom will honor its obligations concerning the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant and will do it for the price set by the intergovernmental agreement. The statement was made by Mr Sergei Boyarkin, program director of the Russian state corporation for nuclear energy Rosatom, on 12 December, BelTA has learned.

“If Belarus decides to build a second nuclear power plant and as a sovereign country it can make the decision, if Belarus decides it needs the second nuclear power plant, Rosatom will take part in that tender,” said Sergei Boyarkin.

The design AES-2006 has been chosen for Belarus’ first nuclear power plant. The design is fully compliant with international norms and IAEA recommendations. Sergei Boyarkin specified that Rosatom is building energy units in Russia using the same design. The design has also been submitted for a tender in Czechia where the construction of a nuclear power plant is planned, too.

“It is a typical design of ours. Even before Fukushima it incorporated all the lessons taught by Chernobyl,” remarked the expert. “Working out our safety norms, we set out to allow the power plant to localize radioactive substances and rule out their emission into the environment if the station completely loses power and external heat absorber the way it happened at the nuclear station Fukushima 1,” said the executive. Sergei Boyarkin assured that the design for Belarus had incorporated all the factors dubbed as “Fukushima lessons”.

“The nuclear compartment of the future Belarusian nuclear station aka the nuclear island will not differ from those created for the Leningrad station or the Baltic nuclear station but the general plan for the construction will be slightly different,” said the expert. “The surrounding things relevant for external cooling systems and transport communications for every site require an individualized approach”. Designers of the nuclear power plant have to take into account peculiarities of the territory, the temperature of the environment, snow and wind pressure, and the presence of subterranean water. “We adjust the typical design to specific technological conditions of the site,” stressed Sergei Boyarkin.

Preparations to build Belarusian nuclear station unaffected by snowfall

The complicated weather conditions, including the massive snowfall, will not affect the progress in the preparatory work that has to be done before the construction of the nuclear power plant in Belarus can begin. The statement was made by Mr Sergei Boyarkin, program director of the Russian state corporation for nuclear energy Rosatom, on 12 December, BelTA has learned.

“We have huge experience of building nuclear stations in other countries, including in the countries where precipitation is much higher than that in Belarus, for instance, tropical countries,” assured the expert. “Our technologies allow working in any weather. There are special techniques for water disposal and for preventing water from getting into the lower layers,” he added. “Everything has been tested, there can be no deviation from the schedule,” stated Sergei Boyarkin.

He reminded that the project is now in the preparatory phase. “The operations, which are being carried out now, do not constitute the construction of the nuclear power plant from the point of view of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The pouring of the foundation for the reactor compartment will herald the beginning,” said the expert. In his words, that stage has not begun yet because the license has to be acquired first. As part of the preparatory phase communications are being built as well as a construction base. Sergei Boyarkin remarked that a nuclear power plant gets assembled from big modules, which are created right at the site in specifically built workshops. The modules cannot be transported by railroad or motorway due to their huge size. For instance, the Kaliningrad nuclear power plant occupied 90 hectares while the construction base built before concrete was poured occupied 150 hectares.

Speaking about the benefits Belarus will reap after building the nuclear station, Sergei Boyarkin noted that with the output capacity of about 8 billion kWh per annum, the first power-generating unit will allow Belarus to stop importing electricity. At present the country imports about 5 billion kWh per annum. The expert stressed that a large part of power-generating installations in Belarus just like those in Russia and other countries are rather old and have low efficiency. The installations consume a lot of fuel and release a large amount of greenhouse gases. The decommissioning of the ineffective installations will result in a shortage of electricity that can be fixed by launching the second power-generating unit.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant will have two power-generating units with the total capacity of up to 2,400MW (1,200MW each). It will be built at the Ostrovets site in Grodno Oblast. The design AES-2006 has been chosen for Belarus’ first nuclear power plant. The design is fully compliant with international norms and IAEA recommendations. The first power-generating unit of the nuclear power plant is scheduled for commissioning in November 2018, with the second one scheduled for July 2020.

The designed working lifespan of the Belarusian nuclear power plant is 60 years. The two energy units will be able to generate 17.74 billion kWh of electricity per annum. The electricity will cost $0.0421 per one kWh. The payback period of the project is estimated at 18.5 years.