OREANDA-NEWS. November 29, 2011. In Moscow a loan agreement signed concerning construction of NPP to SPbAEP project in the Republic of Belarus.

The first NPP in Belarus will be built on Ostrovets site in Grodno Region. It will be built to a project developed by St. Petersburg Atomenergoproekt (SPbAEP).

Near Ostrovets the plant will be built on the turn-key terms. It will comprise two power units of a total capacity of 2,400 MW, which are to be commissioned in 2017 and 2018. The Belarus NPP is envisaged to build on terms of full responsibility of the principal contractor, Atomstroyexport. A contract for development of working documentation for Ostrovets NPP developed by the Russian party will be handed over to the Belarus colleagues for signing by SPbAEP and Atomstroyexport by December 15.

The AES-2006 project meet absolutely all Russian and international safety requirements. It uses four active safety systems which are mutually redundant, a core melt trap, passive heat removal system from the containment and passive heat removal system through steam generators, a hydrogen evacuation system, double-wall containment and other. Neither of operating reactors worldwide is fitted with such a configuration of safety systems.

According to Dmitry Alexeev, Chief Project Engineer at SPbAEP, most important constituents of the AES-2006 project were partially implemented at Tainwan NPP in China, which is currently safest of operating plants in the world. The project successfully passed reviews by Russian and Chinese regulatory authorities and was approved by the IAEA.

Since 2004 SPbAEP has been directly involved at all work stages from site selection through selection of a technology and type of the plant, review and justification of environmental aspects and drafting of the contract supplements.