‘Threat to entire region’: Lithuania refutes Ukrainian official’s info about its buying Belarus NPP energy
Lithuanian officials have denied the recent allegation of the country’s purchasing electricity from Belarus.
On October 20, Andriy Gerus, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy Issues, claimed that although Lithuania called on Ukraine to ban the purchase of Belarusian electricity, it continued to use energy produced by the Belarusian nuclear power plant.
Belsat.eu asked the Lithuanian Energy Ministry to comment on the situation. The agency gave the following answer:
“Lithuania has not bought and does not buy electricity from Belarus. The Belarusian nuclear power plant poses a threat to the entire region; that is why Lithuania has taken all necessary measures to comply with the provisions of the ‘anti-Astravets’ law. As a result, commercial imports from there are completed and the technical flow is limited. The information that appeared is unfounded; it does not reflect the reality.”
This week, Olga Kosharna, the media director of the Ukrainian Nuclear Forum, has said with reference to her own sources that Ukraine intends to purchase electricity from Belarus. According to the expert, Hartmut Jakob, Vice President of Ukraine’s company Energoatom, and Irina Kukharenko, its deputy director for legal affairs, were on a visit to Belarus on October 11-13; they were reportedly holding negotiations with representatives of the state-run Belarusian company Belenergo. They reached an agreement to buy 900 Mwatt of electricity from Belarus, Kosharna added.
The launch of the plant was postponed from 2018. The project is being developed despite the protest of the public, a number of environmental organisations, some international organisations and Lithuania, whose border is several tens of kilometres from the reactors. The Lithuanian parliament even declared the station a ‘threat to national security’. In response to the production of the first kilowatt-hours in Astravets, Lithuania stopped trading in electricity with Belarus.
On November 7, Alyaksandr Lukashenka officially opened the facility. However, the day after his visit, the equipment at the BelNPP failed. During the tests at the first unit, ‘the need to replace some electrical measuring equipment’ was revealed, the Energy Ministry said. At the same time, according to the ministry, all technological systems kept ‘operating in the regular mode’.
In February, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Belarusian nuclear power plant in Astravets, demanding that its commercial launch be suspended.
