On 10 June, the acceptance certificate of the Belarus nuclear power plant (NPP) Unit 1 start-up complex was signed.
“Today, we are witnessing a historic event,” said Alexey Likhachev, Director General of Russia’s ROSATOM. “The first Gen III+ power unit constructed by Rosatom abroad has been put into commercial operation. This is the result of a great deal of work carried out by a team of highly qualified specialists from the two countries, the evidence of reliability and efficiency of Russian nuclear technologies and our common success.”
“Handing over to the Belarusian colleagues the symbolic key from the country’s first nuclear power unit, I can say with full confidence that Belarus has become the owner of the most modern and safe facility,” emphasised Aleksander Lokshin, the First Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy of ROSATOM.
“Now, you will need such a key no earlier than in 80 years, to close the plant only,” he told Mikhail Filimonov, General Director of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant RUE.
According to Deputy Minister of Energy Mikhail Mikhadyuk, the first power unit of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant has generated 2.9 billion kilowatts-hour (kWh) of electricity since its inclusion in the unified energy system.
“This allowed the country to save more than 100 million US dollars on natural gas import substitution,” he said during an interview to the Belarus-1 TV channel. “With the commissioning of two power units of the BelNPP, the decrease in the foreign exchange burden is estimated at about 550 million US dollars per year.”
