The possibility of an incident at Astravets nuclear power plant is practically ruled out, Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Syamashka said on Thursday.
“During the scheduled exercise the Emergencies Ministry and other agencies demonstrated their complete readiness for what theoretically may happen. But we should be ready for any unexpected occurrences,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes the deputy prime minister.
“The probability of a certain design incident at the NPP is only ten to the negative 6th power. For comparison, at plants like Chernobyl NPP, it is ten to the negative 2nd power, which is ten times. The fact proves that there an accident at our station is highly improbable,” he stressed.
According to the top official, Belarus is deliberately preparing for launching the nuclear power plant. The first power-generating unit is supposed to be commissioned in late 2019. The second one will go online in 2020.
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Lithuania has repeatedly criticized the construction of the nuclear power plant 50 kilometers from Vilnius and encouraged the rest of the countries of the United Europe to not buy electricity from the future NPP.
Our neighbour is not only concerned about the proximity of the station to Vilnius, but also with a number of emergencies during the NPP construction. Among the emergencies are a reactor vessel incident, when it fell during the transportation, the collapse of the concrete structure at the site between the reactors. Our channel was the first to report on the incident. Before the official request of the Lithuanian side, representatives of the Belarusian NPP denied this information.
