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European Council’s call to block electricity supplies from BelNPP viewed as politicized
MINSK, 15 December (BelTA) - The Belarusian Energy Ministry views the call of the European Council to block supplies of electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plant (BelNPP) as a politicized one, BelTA learned from the press service of the ministry.
“The Energy Ministry regretted the news about the call of the European Council to the European Commission to seek ways to block supplies of electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plant. The decision is purely political, taken at the initiative of Lithuania, which is known to have declared its readiness to do everything possible to boycott BelNPP. Instead of productive dialogue, the Lithuanian side continues to actively inflate the BelNPP’s ‘threat’ to Europe, intentionally promoting anti-Belarusian rhetoric at international venues,” the press service said.
The ministry believes that the conclusions of the European Council meeting were based on subjective information provided by Lithuania in a knowingly negative way. “Belarus’ position on the matter, as well as the results of the missions of leading authoritative international organizations in nuclear energy, which visited the BelNPP with inspections and positively assessed the steps taken by the country to ensure the safety of the nuclear plant, were not taken into account. This once again emphasizes the bias of European politicians towards Belarus. Such calls for restrictive measures do not contribute to stability in Europe and create additional points of tension in matters of radiation and nuclear safety,” the ministry said.
According to the agency, the loud statements of officials do not always coincide with the position of business circles, for which the main reference point is the competitiveness of Belarusian electricity. “We are confident that it is in demand on foreign markets. However, political speculation around the BelNPP outweighs the laws of economics and common sense,” the ministry said.
The ministry stressed that the BelNPP is built primarily for the Belarusian consumer. “The project is strategically important to strengthen the energy independence of Belarus, as it will annually replace about 4.5 billion cubic meters of imported natural gas. Given the commissioning of the plant, the country has identified promising areas for electricity consumption by the real sector of the economy and the population, and has taken stimulating measures for the development of electric transport and connection of the housing stock to electricity for heating and hot water supply purposes. The BelNPP electricity will be in demand in the domestic market,” the ministry said.
The Belarusian nuclear power plant is being built near Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast using the Russian design AES-2006 featuring two VVER-1200 reactors with the total output capacity of 2,400MW. The engineering division of the Russian state nuclear industry corporation Rosatom is the general contractor.
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