Translated material
People's Atom
Minsk has its eye on a site for a nuclear power plant
The nuclear power plant will most likely be built in the western part of Belarus in the Grodno region, not far from the Lithuanian border at the so-called Ostrovets site. As the BELTA news agency reported yesterday, citing unnamed specialists, “The Ostrovets site for the construction of a Belarusian nuclear power plant is preferable.” However, the final decision has not yet been made, and survey work is also being carried out at the Kukshinovskaya and Krasnopolyanskaya sites, which are located closer to the Russian border in the Mogilev region.The choice of a site for the nuclear power plant must be made by December 1, construction of the station is expected to begin in 2009. The first power unit is expected to be put into operation in 2016, the second - two years later. The capacity of each unit will be 1 thousand MW.
Two companies are being considered as possible contractors for the construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant - the Russian Rosatom and the French Areva. Belarus offered to participate in the construction of the station and the American-Japanese Westinghouse-Toshiba, but it never sent its proposals by August 1, when the deadline for submitting applications expired. At the beginning of the year, officials estimated the cost of the project at $4 billion.
Last week, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus proposed declaring the construction of a nuclear power plant a “people’s construction project” in order to at least partially implement the project using citizens’ savings. “49% of respondents would agree to participate in one way or another in financing the construction of a nuclear power plant,” Mikhail Khurs, a representative of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences, said at a press conference, citing data from a survey conducted in winter. According to him, if information work is carried out correctly, the number of citizens willing to invest in the project may increase.
For the first time, Alexander Lukashenko spoke about the possibility of creating a Belarusian nuclear power plant after it became known about the rise in prices for Russian oil and gas since the beginning of 2007. It is expected that the station will provide a quarter of Belarus' electricity needs. Today, the Belarusian energy sector is more than two-thirds dependent on Russian gas supplies. This year, Minsk is purchasing gas at $129 per thousand cubic meters and hopes that in 2009 the price will rise to no more than $140. Yesterday, Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky, during a visit to the Saratov region, said: “We calculated that the price for Russian gas for Belarus will be approximately $129-$140, not higher. But this is a matter of negotiations.”