Opinions & Interviews

“According to experts of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, once the nuclear power plant is commissioned in Belarus, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions will start reducing by as much as 7-10 million tonnes per year starting from 2018. The latest data show that the emissions in the country amounted to 93 million tonnes,” Iya Malkina said.

The official is confident that the construction of the nuclear power plant in Belarus will have a positive impact on the environmental situation in general and on the development of such important sectors as energy and transport in particular. “This can happen through the development of electric vehicles, replacing of existing types of energy resources. We expect that all these will help the country fulfill its commitments that we intend to undertake in connection with the signing of the Paris agreement on climate,” Iya Malkina noted.

As was reported, Belarus plans to decommission over 900MW worth of power-generating capacity prior to launching the nuclear power plant. Those are installations which service life is over or which are no longer economically expedient. Once the Belarusian nuclear power plant is commissioned, Belarus will be able to decrease natural gas import by 25%. Today the country buys 21 billion m3 of natural gas. Once the nuclear power plant comes on stream, Belarus will be able to substitute 5 billion m3 of natural gas.

Since 2014, thanks to the modernization of the energy system, Belarus has saved over 1 billion m3 of natural gas per annum or the equivalent of $200 million. With the launch of the nuclear power plant, the country will not need to import electricity any longer.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is a project to build an AES-2006 type nuclear power plant 18km away from Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast. The Belarusian nuclear power plant will have two power-generating units with the total output capacity of up to 2,400MW (2x1,200MW). The Russian company NIAEP-ASE is the general designer and 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.