Nuclear incident in Belarus: Lithuanian authorities alert citizens
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LRT 1st Dec 2020, Ecohome, a prominent environmental NGO in Belarus, has reported that Oil Price 3rd Dec 2020, Days after reports emerged that the newly opened Belarus nuclear power
plant suffered an incident, authorities in neighboring Lithuania told the Baltic country’s population on Thursday to stock up on food in case of an incident at the nuclear power facility in Belarus, which is just 30 miles away from Lithuania’s capital city Vilnius.https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Lithuanians-Urged-To-Stockpile-Food-Amid-Reports-Of-Nuclear-Power-Incident.html |
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Incidents at Belarus nuclear station have alarmed neighbouring Lithuania
Lithuania wary of incident at Belarus nuclear plant https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/lithuania-weary-of-incident-at-belarus-nuclear-plant/ Benas Gerdžiūnas | 1 Dec 20, LRT.lt/en Lithuania has asked Belarus for clarification after its new nuclear plant located some 50 kilometres from the country’s capital suffered an incident just five days after launch.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko took part in the opening of the plant on 6 November, where he said the launch of the Astravyets NPP was as “ordinary” as building a metro.
“Belarus is becoming a nuclear power,” he declared.
Several voltage-measuring transformers outside of the nuclear reactor exploded during an incident on 7 November, according to sources at TUT.by, an independent media outlet in Belarus.
On Monday, the Belarusian Energy Ministry said that “a need to replace the measuring equipment arose” during testing, without providing further details.
Lithuania’s State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate (VATESI) said the plant is still undergoing testing. However, “we have also received no information about the [planned] next steps to launch the plant”, VATESI told BNS in a written comment.
Lithuania has been one of the most ardent critics of the nuclear plant built by the Russian state atomic corporation Rosatom and funded by a loan from the Kremlin.
Vilnius says the plant is unsafe and was built in breach of international safety standards. Minsk denies all allegations.
In September, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland had sent a joint statement to the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and contracting parties to the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), calling on Belarus to start addressing nuclear safety issues without delay.
At the same time, the Russian company Rosatom is in talks with Belarus about the construction of a second nuclear power plant and a research reactor in the country, Rosatom chief Alexander Likhachev announced on Tuesday in a video statement.
In August, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania agreed not to purchase electricity from the plant.
The Baltic states are gearing up to switch from the Russian-controlled BRELL electricity grid that also includes Belarus, and synchronise with the continental European system by 2025.
(Benas Gerdžiūnas, LRT.lt/en | Alexandra Brzozowski, EURACTIV.com)
Belarus shuts down its newly inaugurated nuclear power plant to replace equipment
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Belarus shuts down its newly inaugurated nuclear power plant to replace equipment, VILNIUS, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Belarus has shut down production at its new nuclear power plant, inaugurated on Saturday by President Alexander Lukashenko, to replace some of its equipment, its Ministry of Energy said in a statement on Monday.It did not say when the need to replace the equipment was first discovered. Lithuanian grid operator (TSO) Litgrid , located 20km from the plant, said it had detected a production stoppage at the plant at 1000 GMT on Sunday. The power plant was built by Russian state-owned firm Rosatom and financed by Moscow with a $10 billion loan…… https://www.reuters.com/article/belarus-nuclearpower-stoppage/belarus-shuts-down-its-newly-inaugurated-nuclear-power-plant-to-replace-equipment-idINL1N2HV26T
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Belarus opens nuclear plant opposed by neighboring Lithuania
The president of Belarus has formally opened the country’s first nuclear power plant over the objections of neighboring Lithuania, abc News ByThe Associated Press, 8 November 2020, KYIV, Ukraine — Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday formally opened the country’s first nuclear power plant, a project sharply criticized by neighboring Lithuania……
In line with a law banning electricity imports from Belarus once the nuclear plant started up, Lithuania’s Litgrid power operator cut the inflow of electricity from Belarus when the plant began producing electricity on Tuesday…….
Belarus suffered severe damage from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spewed radioactive fallout from a plant in then-Soviet Ukraine across large areas of Europe. That painful legacy has fueled opposition to the nuclear plant project in Belarus.
Andrei Sannikov, a prominent opposition figure who was imprisoned for 16 months after running against Lukashenko in the 2010 presidential election, tweeted Saturday that the plant constitutes a “geopolitical weapon” against the European Union.
Lithuania closed its sole Soviet-built nuclear power plant in 2009. In recent weeks, Lithuanian authorities have handed out free iodine pills to residents living near the Belarus border. Iodine can help reduce radiation buildup in the thyroid in case of a leak at the nuclear plant. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/belarus-opens-nuclear-plant-opposed-neighboring-lithuania-74073929
Europe still without a final disposal solution for its most dangerous nuclear waste
Le Monde 4th Nov 2020, Europe still without a final disposal solution for its most dangerous
nuclear waste. The first edition of the World Report on Nuclear Waste,
published Wednesday in its French version, provides elements of comparison
of management methods in different countries.
Anxieties, memories of Chernobyl, as Belarus launches new nuclear power station
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Chernobyl fears as Belarus launches new nuclear power station: Lithuania distributes iodine tablets to 500,000 close to border over safety concerns
Daily Mail, RACHAEL BUNYAN FOR MAILONLINE and AFP , 4 Nov 20, Belarus today launched its controversial Russia-built nuclear power station despite safety concerns from neighbouring Baltic states three decades after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius criticised the launch saying it had gone ahead despite unresolved safety issues The government in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, has also offered free iodine tablets to around half a million people living close to the Belarus border to help protect them from radiation in case of an accident The Astravets nuclear power plant, Belarus’s first nuclear station, is just 30 miles away from Vilnius. ……… Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius criticised the launch saying it had gone ahead despite unresolved safety issues and described the energy project as ‘geopolitical’. The EU and the international community ‘simply cannot stay indifferent to such cynical ignorance,’ Linkevicius wrote on Twitter. Lithuania said it had immediately stopped electricity imports from Belarus and neighbouring Latvia said it had also blocked imports of energy generated at the plant.…….. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8909665/Chernobyl-fears-Belarus-launches-new-nuclear-power-station-despite-safety-concerns.html |
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Belarus postpones launch of nuclear reactor
Radio Free Europe 9th Oct 2020, Belarus says it has postponed the full launch of the first reactor at its
Astravets nuclear power plant by two years to 2022. The plant, located near
the Lithuanian border, was scheduled to be launched on October 6 until the
cabinet order on October 9. Built by the Russian state firm Rosatom and
financed by Moscow with a $10 billion loan, the project is opposed by
neighboring EU member Lithuania, whose capital, Vilnius, is just 50
kilometers away. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are moving to a full
decoupling from their Soviet-era common power system by 2025.
Safety of Belarus nuclear power station in question after IAEA report
Deficiencies discovered during IAEA INIR mission in Belarus may cause negative impact on safety of Belarusian NPP, Vates, 08/27/2020 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted the Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) Phase 3 mission from 24 February to 4 March 2020 in the Republic of Belarus and recently published the report with 7 recommendations and 6 suggestions.
The mission evaluated the development status in the areas linked to Belarus nuclear infrastructure such as regulatory framework, nuclear safety, radioactive waste management, financial and human resources, nuclear security in order to commission and operate the first nuclear power plant (hereinafter – NPP).
The report emphasizes, that Belarus needs to further develop its legal and regulatory framework of nuclear energy, to assure regulatory body independence in cooperation with technical support organizations, to ensure sufficient funds for decommissioning and radioactive waste management, to allocate responsibility for establishing the radioactive waste management organization, to ensure reliable restart of the grid system in the event of total collapse once the NPP is in operation, to finalize all necessary programmes for starting operation, to ensure long term arrangements for maintenance of Belarusian NPP and to ensure capacity and competence of operating organisation.
Recommendations and suggestions concerning improvement of nuclear energy infrastructure are related to:
– deficiencies in legal and regulatory framework of nuclear safety;
– assurance of independence of regulatory body;
– deficiencies in implementing Integrated Management Systems of regulatory body and operating organization;
– ensuring readiness to restart of the grid system in the event of total collapse once the NPP is in operation;
– assurance of Belarussian NPP maintenance after the warranty period;
– deficiencies in the readiness of the physical security system in the operating organization;
– deficiencies in establishing responsibilities in the area of the radioactive waste management;
– international obligations (Belarus has not yet joined the Amendment to the Convention of Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and not ratified Protocol Additional to IAEA for the Application of Safeguards).
In VATESI experts’ opinion, not implementation of recommendations and suggestions, indicated in the report, may cause negative impact on safety of the Belarusian NPP during its commissioning and consequent operation…… http://www.vatesi.lt/index.php?id=551&L=1&tx_news_pi1[news]=882&tx_news_pi1[controller]=News&tx_news_pi1[action]=detail&cHash=e3cdcce90fb55e6650c0eb887e2cce12
Lithuania standing firm against sales of electricity from Belarus’ new nuclear power station
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Lithuania spurns Baltic presidents’ meeting amid nuclear power rift KURESSAARE, Saaremaa, Estonia (Reuters) 25 June 20, – Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda refused to attend a planned meeting with his Estonian and Latvian counterparts on Thursday, saying he did so after the countries failed to agree to ban electricity purchases from a new nuclear power plant in Belarus. Lithuania has a law banning all Belarusian power sales after the power plant gets operational. The Estonian president’s office, which hosted the meeting, said that Nauseda, who is dealing with a reshuffle of his team, “decided to stay home at the last minute due to internal affairs”. Lithuania wants all the three countries to sign up to banning sales of Belarusian electricity after the nuclear plant comes online, binning an earlier draft agreement that only pledged to help keep the energy from being sold in Lithuania……. Lithuania sees the nuclear power plant, built by Russia’s Atomstroyexport near its capital and financed by Moscow with a $10 billion loan, as threat to its safety and national security, something Belarus disagrees with. “The President’s opinion is that negotiations should be finished first,” Nauseda’s spokesman told Reuters in a statement.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-baltics-energy-belarus/lithuania-spurns-baltic-presidents-meeting-amid-nuclear-power-rift-idUSKBN23W27C |
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Lithuania, Belarus sign nuclear incident notification agreement
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Lithuania, Belarus sign nuclear incident notification agreement
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-26 01:02:32|Editor: huaxia VILNIUS, May 25 — The nuclear safety authorities of Lithuania and Belarus signed an agreement on early notification of a nuclear accident and on the exchange of important nuclear safety information, Lithuania’s State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate (VATESI) announced here on Monday.
In order to protect the public by minimizing the potential radiation-related risks and consequences, the two authorities agreed to exchange key information immediately after a nuclear incident or when the monitoring systems indicate a radiation dose-rate level that could be hazardous to the public health, said a VATESI press release. ….. Lithuania’s authorities have regularly raised questions about the environmental and nuclear safety of the Ostrovets nuclear power plant in Belarus…..http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-05/26/c_139087159.htm |
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Belarus to get a new nuclear reactor along with $10 billion debt to Russia
In January, Lithuanian Energy Minister Zygimantas Vaiciunas told RFE/RL that the Belarusian plant is “a threat to our national security, public health, and environment.”
“The key question is the site selection, which was done politically — geopolitically,” Vaiciunas told RFE/RL.
Plans for the nuclear plant were unveiled by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 2008 when Minsk received a $10 billion loan from Moscow for the project.
The general contractor for the Belarusian nuclear power plant building is Atomstroiexport, an affiliate of Russia’s state-owned Rosatom. Based on reporting by TASS, ONT, and RFE/RL correspondent Matthew Luxmoore
Belarus to swap gas dependence on Moscow for nuclear dependence on Moscow
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Belarus to swap gas dependence on Moscow for nuclear dependence on Moscow https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-03-belarus-to-swap-gas-dependence-on-moscow-for-nuclear-dependence-on-moscowA nuclear power plant built to lessen Belarus’s dependence on Moscow for natural gas – but constructed and lavishly financed by Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom – is due to begin operation later this year, officials in the Belarus capital of Minsk have said. March 24, 2020 by Charles Digges
A nuclear power plant built to lessen Belarus’s dependence on Moscow for natural gas – but constructed and lavishly financed by Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom – is due to begin operation later this year, officials in the Belarus capital of Minsk have said. The plant will feature two VVER-1200 reactors – the second of which will come online next year – that will together generate some 2.4 gigawatts of power in the cloistered post-Soviet dictatorship on Russia’s western border. The International Atomic Energy Agency found that the plant largely fulfilled general safety guidelines and issued a number of recommendations for improvement. Others have raised alarm over potential safety issues. GlobalData quoted energy and nuclear policy analyst Mycle Schneider as warning: “Neighboring countries have voiced concern over the lack of review of some serious safety concerns, and Lithuania has transmitted an official note to the European Council.” Since its inception in the early 2000s, the Belarus nuclear power plant, in Ostrovets near the border of Lithuania, has been fraught with difficulties. Environmentalists who oppose the plant are routinely harassed and stifled and in some cases kicked out of the country. Neighboring Lithuania, once seen as a promising potential market when construction began, is now so opposed to the plant that its parliament outlawed purchasing any electricity it produces and has sent envoys to other countries encouraging them to do the same. Poland and the Ukraine have also spoken out against the plant. Each of these groups have called attention to the mishaps that have plagued the plant during its construction, including an incident in 2016 when technicians inadvertently dropped a 330-ton reactor pressure vessel – which houses the core – from a crane. A replacement unit sent to the site was accidentally run into a column at a railway station when it arrived. But the plant also illustrates an energy conundrum facing many European countries. While a number of nations in the old Soviet orbit seek to diversify their energy supplies away from Russian natural gas, Rosatom is more than willing to step into the vacuum left by that shift. By offering huge loans to build and supply nuclear power plants, Rosatom can keep customers financially and technically beholden to Moscow for as long as 50 years. With other kinds of power infrastructure, a contractor builds a facility and leaves it to be operated by the country where it stands. Not so with nuclear power plants, where foreign government customers, like Belarus, remain dependent on Rosatom – and thus the Russian state – for fuel, know-how and eventual decommissioning works. That geopolitical strategy is not lost on Lithuania, whose prime minister recently told the New York Times that: “The [Ostrovets} nuclear plant is an example of Russia’s desire to keep states along its borders in its orbit at all costs – it helps them preserve more influence.” The policy is has broad implications. Rosatom has convinced dozens of countries to sign memorandums of understanding on all manner of nuclear services, from research and training facilities to nuclear power plant construction. As a result, Rosatom says that its portfolio of foreign projects has swelled to more than $200 billion. But that figure invites skepticism. Many of the counties Rosatom counts toward that figure – like Ethiopia, Algeria, Nigeria, Sudan and Rwanda – won’t be ready to support nuclear power on their grids for decades. Others where Rosatom builds are already underway – like India’ Kudankulam, Iran’s Bushehr and China’s Tianwan – are already familiar with Rosatom’s typical cost overruns and delays. Furthermore, a deep dig into Rosatom’s claimed income by the Russian environmental group Ecodefence revealed that business wasn’t going quite as indicated. A report by the group, published last year, detailed a number of cases where the corporation misstated the worth of its overseas reactor construction projects, and inflated their worth by several billion dollars. Still, the corporation is an ambitious and successful presence on the international market. According to one study, cited by the New York Times, Rosatom has sold more nuclear technology abroad since 1999 than the United States, France, China, South Korea and Japan combined. Rosatom’s approach to marketing its reactors is distinct from its western competitors because it offers to finance, build and operate the plants that it builds abroad. These generous terms come thanks to the enormous state subsidies Rosatom receives – and which it can then funnel into loans that boost its profits on paper. The Belarus plant, for instance, comes thanks to a $10 million line of credit from Rosatom. Hungary, a member of the EU, became another customer when it took an $11 billion loan to build its Paks II in 2016. Rosatom also won a $30 billion contract for four reactors in Egypt, and another big nuclear plant deal in Turkey. While it’s tempting to see a strategy afoot in Rosatom’s foreign projects, the Kremlin insists it’s just business. President Vladimir Putin has publicly distanced himself from mixing politics with foreign commerce. |
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Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania oppose energy imports from a Belarusian nuclear power plant
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Emerging Europe 13th Feb 2020. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are joining forces to oppose energy imports from a Belarusian nuclear power plant (NPP) Lithuania has declared a national security threat. The governments of the three Baltic nations have announced that they will sign a declaration of intent to oppose electricity purchases from Russian-built NPP at Astravets near the Lithuanian border.
We are pleased to be moving closer to a common position,”
Lithuania’s prime minister Saulius Skvernelis told reporters, adding that the three Baltic nations and the European Commission will work on finding “an appropriate mechanism controlling the origin of electricity entering our networks from third countries”.https://emerging-europe.com/news/baltic-states-will-not-buy-energy-from-belarus-npp/ |
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Anxiety in Belarus and Lithuania, over new Chernobyl-style nuclear power station
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They may not tell you the whole truth’: Fears of another Chernobyl as Russian-built atomic power station set to open in Belarus, Independent, 20 Jan 2020 Three decades after world’s worst nuclear disaster, the country most affected by the fall out is set to open its first nuclear plant. But as Oliver Carroll finds out, not everyone is pleased It was when the tree fellers arrived in early 2009 with their bulldozers that Nikolai Ulasevich, a local activist, knew the game was up. There might not have been a published order to build an atomic power station in the fields overlooking his homestead in the village of Vornyany – but a decision had clearly been made. In authoritarian Belarus those decisions rarely have a reverse gear. In the years that followed, Ulasevich watched as the gigantic cooling towers and system blocks of Belarus’s first nuclear power station took shape. Construction, which was led by the Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom, would be far from straightforward. A string of incidents delayed its opening, but the first reactor is finally due to go online early 2020. To say the construction of the Belarusian nuclear plant has been controversial would be to trivialise the history of these lands. Chernobyl lies only seven miles from Belarus’s southern border, and the nuclear accident, still the world’s worst, has left the deepest of scars locally. The direction of the wind in spring 1986 – and the Soviet authorities’ decision to avoid major harm in Moscow – meant Belarus suffered more than any other region in the union. At the moment that the radioactive clouds moved towards the capital, air force pilots were ordered to chase down the toxic clouds and seed them with jets of silver iodide. Much of the southernmost region of Homel remains seriously contaminated, with elevated oncology levels as a result. Any local over 50 can recall what they were doing on those dry, spring-summer days. They talk about the tiredness; the strange, dryness of the mouth; the rumours that it might be a good idea to take iodine, but the lack of reliable information. They will also tell you about a cloud of secrecy almost as harmful as the black cumulus masses that had their radioactive bowels emptied over southern Belarus. …….. “The thought of what happened back in 1986 can’t fail to make you anxious about what may happen. You know they may not tell you the whole truth.” Lithuania, the European nation that borders Belarus just 10 miles west of Astravets, is bitterly opposed to the nuclear plant. It says it has not been properly consulted and claims the plant breaches post-Fukushima distance guidelines – in particular, a recommendation that nuclear power stations should not be built closer than 100km of major conurbations. The new nuclear plant lies just 30 miles east of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. The Lithuanians say they are preparing for any eventuality: from stockpiling iodine tablets to opening up nuclear bunkers and issuing survival notes to their citizens. In October, authorities ran a major preparedness operation, imitating a disaster response to a nuclear meltdown. The drills were knowingly hyperbolic. But several reported incidents do give pause for thought. From what we know, the reactor vessel in Belarus has already been involved in at least two accidents. The first was in July 2016, when it was apparently dropped from a crane during installation. Belarusian authorities took weeks to admit a “minor” incident. Five months later, a replacement reactor vessel collided with a railway pylon while being transported. At least five workers have died in construction accidents. There was at least one fire incident in the control room. The outside world would likely have stayed little the wiser were it not for the opposition activist Ulasevich monitoring from his modest home, which he shares with his wife, a few chickens and sheep, three miles away from the new power station. He said he found out about the dropped reactor vessel in conversation with a local construction worker. “He swore that he saw it break free of ropes at a height of two or three metres,” he says. ……. Yury Voronezhtsev, the man who led the official Soviet official response to Chernobyl, says he could not believe any statement that the plant was “safe”. “I don’t believe that our Belarusian construction workers are any better than the Soviet ones,” he tells The Independent. “We have the same people, and the same systems………. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/chernobyl-belarus-nuclear-power-station-atomic-vornyany-rosatom-ostrovets-astravets-a9271811.html
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