Page 48 - BNE_magazine_07_2020

48 I Eastern Europe bne July 2020
Nervous neighbours
The legacy of the Chernobyl disaster
in 1986 has created a sensitivity to Russian nuclear power that needs to be addressed.
Neighbouring Lithuania has voiced the most vocal objections, as the reactor is being built only 45km from its capital Vilnius. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda called for measures to “prevent
plants should not be built within 100 kilometres of major population centres."
The Espoo Convention states that all countries must consult their neighbours on the potential cross-border environmental impact of a nuclear project.
But so far there is only a draft assessment from Espoo and it needs to be adopted as a final version before it
While the assessment found nothing wrong with the location of the Ostrovets site, it did say that Belarus has not provided enough information on alternative sites, and that was, the draft states, in breach of the Convention.
The Espoo assessment still needs to be finalised but even if it concludes that Belarus is in breach of the convention, as there is no bilateral agreement between Belarus and Lithuania governing
the implementation of the Espoo Convention, any conclusions it draws are not binding on Belarus.
That hasn't stopped Vilnius from playing up the issue. To bring home the danger Lithuania has bought half a million iodine tablets and held drills to prepare for a nuclear emergency last autumn that included the mock evacuation of half a million people from the capital
in the event of a major meltdown.
Safety first
The old RBMK class of graphite- moderated nuclear reactor designed and used in the Soviet Union is being phased out. (There are current 10 RBMK reactors still in operation.) For example, the construction of a new RBMK reactor on the shores of the Sea of Azov in Ukraine was immediately stopped half way through after Chernobyl blew
up and the decaying superstructure
“Lithuania has bought half a million iodine tablets and held a mock evacuation of half a million people from the capital”
countries with unsafe nuclear power plants” from exporting electricity to Lithuania, in a barb that was clearly directed at Belarus. And the government in Vilnius has been on a campaign to feed the fears that dog nuclear power projects, especially in Eastern Europe.
"The plant is being built in breach of safety standards, including the UN’s Espoo and Aarhus conventions," Arvydas Sekmokas, Lithuania’s former energy minister, told Euronews."Minsk has disregarded International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recommendations
made after the Fukushima disaster that
can enter into legal force. Moreover, the draft doesn't say that the plant is being built in breach of the convention.
“The environmental impact assessment [EIA] documentation of Belarus on the Ostrovets nuclear power plant includes information that sufficiently addresses issues referred to in technical and scientific questions related specifically to the Ostrovets site,” the draft assessment says and goes on to state that Belarus has complied with all the requests for information demanded by Espoo, but concludes more work still needs to done before a final decision can be made.
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