Expert: Belarusian nuclear station design offers better safety than foreign analogues

The nuclear station design that Belarus has chosen meets the strictest standards and recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency and boasts improved safety parameters. Several such parameters, namely the availability of active and passive safeguards, put the design head and shoulders above foreign analogues. The statement was made by Mr Nikolai Grusha, Director of the Nuclear Energy Department of the Belarusian Energy Ministry, during the online conference hosted by the BelTA website on 22 March.

Apart from that, the Russian design has other advantages such as the identical technical and legal base of Belarus and Russia, the absence of a language barrier, the possibility of getting as many Belarusian enterprises involved in the project as possible. “It is also extremely important that the prototype of the design has positive experience of the operation of the nuclear power plants that have been built using it,” said the official.

Belarusian scientists and specialists have done a lot to analyze and assess the nuclear station designs available on the global market and the companies that implement them, including the Russian state corporation Rosatom, the American-Japanese company Westinghouse-Toshiba, the French-German group AREVA, and designs by Chinese corporations. After thorough consideration of the nuclear station designs the companies offer on the global market of nuclear technologies Belarus chose the Russian design AES-2006 of the three-plus generation.