As emphasized in a statement issued by the Ministry’s press service, this shutdown was planned and testing of all NPP systems and equipment will continue until December 11.
Earlier this week, the Belarusian NGO Ekodom (Ecohome) portal Ecohome-ngo.by published information about a possible incident in Astravyec, which it had received from a campaign of Belarusian nuclear opponents, which indicated that it was cooperating with the Astravyez NPP. security issues.
The statement sent by it stated that a serious incident had occurred during the hydraulic testing of the reactor, in which the emergency cooling tank was significantly damaged, and that, in order not to acknowledge the accident, the tank was being repaired for safety reasons. Thus, the reactor is operated without an emergency cooling system – tests are being carried out to increase capacity, which poses a threat of a very serious incident, said the campaign of Belarusian nuclear opponents, which received information about the incident from several unrelated sources.
In response to this information, the Lithuanian State Nuclear Safety Inspectorate (VATESI) has requested information on the condition of the reactor emergency cooling system from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Belarus, but has not received a response. The neighboring ministry has merely stated that there have been no incidents in the process of loading nuclear fuel at the power plant that could be classified as special or exceptional. The same response has been received by Ekodom.
VATESI intends to address this ministry again in the near future, calling for information on all possible incidents, including those that could cause public concern.
The start of hydraulic testing of the NPP reactor was announced by the Ministry of Belarus on September 7, but its completion has not been announced.
The Astravyez NPP was started up on November 3, and on November 7, the power plant was inaugurated by the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, but electricity production was stopped a day later. The Ministry of Energy later explained that it was necessary to replace “known equipment” to resume production, but the reasons were not revealed, meanwhile the Belarusian media reported that the turbine of the first power unit had to be stopped due to transformer failure.
On the night of November 19, electricity production in Astravjec was resumed.
Lithuania believes that Belarus has not complied with safety requirements by building a power plant about 30 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and 50 kilometers from Vilnius, but Minsk denies the allegations.
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