BelTA to host online conference on nuclear energy on 22 March

An online conference featuring Director of the Nuclear Energy Department of the Energy Ministry of the Republic of Belarus Nikolai Grusha and Advisor to the Executive Vice-President of Rusatom Overseas Sergei Boyarkin will be held on the website of the BelTA News Agency from 12:00 to 13:00 on 22 March. The conference will be titled “Nuclear power: environment, safety, advantages”.

Belarus launched its own nuclear program not so long ago; however the IAEA experts believe that our country can be called one of the most advanced newcomers. The quality of preparation works on the Ostrovets site was hailed by Russian and international experts. As early as the summer of 2013 the concrete will be poured; works on all the 62 objects of the production base and out-of-site facilities, networks and structures will be completed by September. Director General of the Russian state corporation for nuclear energy Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko has recently visited the construction site. He praised the high quality of works and said that Belarusian construction workers might get licenses to build nuclear power plants in Russia.

Environmentalists and scientists say that nuclear power is the most promising, most advanced and the cheapest source of energy. The humankind is unlikely to come up with an alternative to nuclear power in the near future. Leading European countries remain committed to supporting nuclear energy development. Representatives of 12 EU member states, namely Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Spain, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, the Netherlands, France and Czechia, have confirmed their plans to promote nuclear energy. Even Japan announced its decision to consider resuming the nuclear power program two years after the Fukushima accident.

What is Belarus’ strategy for developing nuclear energy? What are the advantages of the Russian NPP design? How will the Belarusian NPP be protected from external emergencies? Is there any connection between the NPP and greenhouse effect? These and other questions will be answered by Nikolai Grusha and Sergei Boyarkin during the online conference.

Questions can be submitted in advance or during the conference on the BelTA website www.belta.by in the section ONLINE CONFERENCE. Answers will be posted after 12:00 on 22 March real-time.