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“At present we employ about 3,500 construction workers at the site. We plan to increase the figure up to 6,200 people by the end of the year. At the height of the construction operation in 2016-2017 the number will reach 8,000,” Mikhail Filimonov remarked.

The official stressed that the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant proceeds strictly on schedule. “The cooling tower is now 34m above the ground level. The building of the reactor of the first power-generating unit is at 22m. By the end of the year we plan to reach 44m and 22m with regard to the first and second units respectively,” he explained.

Speaking about spending, the Director General of the enterprise Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant noted that in 2015 money will be needed to pay for construction and installation operations and for getting the equipment made. “We plan to spend $633 million in 2015, including $570 million borrowed from Russia. We have spent 14.5% of the planned figure since the beginning of the construction project,” he said.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build an AES-2006 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The power plant will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW). The Russian merged company OAO NIAEP – ZAO ASE is the general designer and the general contractor of the project. In line with the general contract for building the nuclear power plant the first power-generating unit is scheduled for commissioning in 2018, with the second one to go online in 2020.