According to the procurement journal of Russia’s state corporation Rosatom, a new reactor vessel for the Belarusian nuclear power plant in Astravets is to be shipped in late October.
A new reactor vessel is expected to leave its place of production – Volgodonsk-based plant Atommash – on 25 October. The destination is Babrouniki station which is not far from the NPP construction site.
The documentation does not specify for which power-generating unit of the Belarusian NPP the reactor vessel is reserved for. According to previous reports, the vessel held in store for the second station unit might be installed on block Nr 1.
As reported earlier, during installation the enclosure of the future reactor fell from the height of 2 – 4 meters at the construction site of the Belarusian NPP in Astravets.
At first, the Belarusian Energy Ministry declined any comment on the situation. The press office group of the company Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of the Russian state corporation Rosatom and the general contractor at the Belarusian NPP construction, said the information about the reactor’s fall was untrue. Later, however, the Belarusian side confirmed that the ‘emergency situation had occurred in the storage area of the reactor body during its movement in the horizontal plane’.
Then Belarus president Alyaksandr Lukashenka ordered to ‘get rid of the reactor vessel’ if it had suffered ‘the slightest bit of damage’. Rosatom admitted that the incident had taken place but stated that Belarusian NPP reactor housing had not been damaged.
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The NPP first power-generating unit is scheduled for commissioning in 2018, the second one – in 2020. The construction of two nuclear reactors is provided in the agreement reached by Belarus and Russia, the reactors being supplied by Atomstroyexport, Russia. The project faced opposition at home and abroad on both safety and political grounds.
