MINSK, 4 February (BelTA) - The Belarusian nuclear power plant (BelNPP) has already implemented the priority measures of the national plan of action following the stress tests, chief engineer of the Reliability and Safety Analysis Department of the Belarusian NPP enterprise Nikolai Karpenko told the media in BelTA's press center.
“The top-priority items, which unambiguously improve our level of safety, have been implemented. They mainly concern acquisition of equipment that would ensure readiness to deal with beyond design accidents under any conditions. We also completed a number of items which are of computational and analytical nature,” said Nikolai Karpenko. There have also been issued reports on seismic safety analysis and analysis of NPP power unit control zones amid beyond design accidents and so on.
Speaking about the readiness of BelNPP for various emergency situations, Nikolai Karpenko explained that the plant's design contains “the most advanced technical solutions and engineering surveys”. “I believe that the Belarusian NPP project, which is based on the NPP-2006 project, is the world's most advanced at the moment,” he said.
A group of European experts is scheduled to visit the Belarusian nuclear power plant in February as part of the peer review of the national plan of action following the results of the stress tests. The visit is being prepared by the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG). During the visit to the Belarusian nuclear power plant the European experts are expected to get familiar with the local safety system and documentation.
“Safety management is not a one-time project. It would not be right if we dealt with plant safety from time to time. The safety management process is endless - technology evolves, regulatory requirements change and become more stringent. Therefore, we need to deal with the issue all the time,” the BelNPP representative said.
As BelTA reported earlier, Belarus voluntarily conducted NPP stress tests in 2016-2018 in accordance with the procedure of the European Union, which analyzed in detail the resistance of the nuclear power plant to external natural influences and their combination. The document contains 23 measures with implementation deadlines from 2019 to 2025.
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 first unit was commissioned in 2021, with the second one expected to go online in H1 2022.
