Belarus does not intend to discontinue constructing the nuclear power plant in Astravets, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said at the Second Scientific Congress in Minsk.
“We will build it anyway, and no matter whether someone likes it or not!” he said and urged the neighbours ‘not to turn back to the issue’.
The Belarusian leader addressed Lithuania that ‘worries the most’ and stressed that the safety of the NPP was the concern of Belarus. He also encouraged ‘skilled and well-trained’ Lithuanian specialists, who were earlier employed at the closed Ignalina NPP, to come and work in Belarus.
“Instead of talking about shutting down the construction project, I’ve invited our neighbors to get together and think how we can operate the nuclear power plant in order to provide Belarus and our neighbors with electricity since we will have electricity to spare,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes him as saying.
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.
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In March, the Lithuanian authorities stated that Vilnius would not buy electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plant. A bit later, Piotr Naimski, the Polish government Plenipotentiary for the Strategic Energy Infrastructure, said that Poland supported Lithuania in issue of boycotting the purchase of electricity from the Astravets NPP.
