Baltic States – CIS, Belarus, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Legislation, Lithuania, Nuclear power plant

The Lithuanian regulator commented on the EU peer review report of Belarus' stress tests published by the Commission on Wednesday. 

VATESI Head Michail Demcenko said in a press release that "the amount and safety significance of the recommendations has revealed major deficiencies of the Belarus NPP design", adding that Lithuania will continue to raise questions about the choice of the site and the project's incomplete environmental impact assessment. 

"Taking into consideration the best European and other international practice, Lithuania raises other important to Belarus NPP design safety issues. These issues are the site selection only 40 km from the capital Vilnius of one of European Union countries and the safety assessment of that site, environmental impact assessment, consideration of modern international safety requirements for new NPPs, including heavy airplane crash impact assessment, quality assurance and safety culture deficiencies during the construction and operation," he said. 

According to VATESI, Lithuanian experts actively participated in the stress tests organized by the EC and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG), submitting 160 questions to Belarus' national report, taking part in working group meetings and visiting the Astravyets plant. European experts submitted a total of 464 questions to the report.