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Authorizing President Aliaksandr Lukashenko, who has led the country for 26 years and recently came under great pressure to resign after the disputed elections, said on September 16: “November 7 is a memorable day for us. . We can stay there and say we get the first electricity from our nuclear power plant. “
Lukashenko is expected to attend the inauguration ceremony of the Astrava power plant in person.
The president described the inauguration of the plant as a historic event in the history of his country.
“Everything is so mundane as if we had built a subway. This is a historic moment: the country is becoming an atomic state,” Lukashenko told the state news agency BelTA on Saturday.
In addition to Belarusian officials, the event will be attended by Grigory Rapota, Secretary of State for the Union with Russia, Alexei Lichachev, head of the Russian energy giant Rosatom, which built the Astrava power plant, and Dmitry Mezencev, Russian ambassador to Belarus.
Lukashenko is expected to familiarize himself with the power plant facilities, as well as visit the control point of the first reactor, where he must give permission to increase the capacity to 400 megawatts.
In addition, the president intends to participate in the rally together with the builders of the power plant.
The Energy Ministry announced that the Astrava nuclear power plant was connected to the Belarusian power grid on November 3, followed by tests of the operational stability of the plant.
The Belarusian Ministry of Energy has previously announced that the power plant’s first design-capable reactor should start operating in the first quarter of 2021.
The first nuclear power plant in Belarus under construction near the Lithuanian state will have two reactors from the Russian VVER project, each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts. The second reactor is expected to come online approximately one year after the start of the first reactor.
The project is financed by a loan from the Russian government; the power plant is being built by Rosatom Corporation.
The Astrava nuclear power plant project has sparked a political conflict between Belarus and Lithuania that has been going on for several years, making the power plant unsafe and urging the world community to pressure Lukashenko to stop his building.
When the nuclear power plant started producing electricity, Lithuania immediately stopped trading with Belarus. However, physically electricity will continue to flow to the Baltic market because it is in deficit.
As Lithuania has not yet approved a unified methodology for trilateral electricity trading with Russia, Latvia promises to start trading with Russia on a common connection on November 5.
A protest note from the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry (MFA) sent to Minsk on Wednesday condemned Belarus’s actions, which pose a nuclear and environmental threat not only to Belarus or Lithuania, but also to Europe as a whole.
Vilnius called on Belarus to suspend the operation of the nuclear power plant until the highest standards of nuclear safety and environmental requirements are met.
The note also recalls that Astrava NPP violates the international conventions of Espoo and Aarhus, the recommendations of the European Union during the stress test process have not been implemented.
At the time, Minsk constantly emphasized that the Astrava power plant would help reduce the amount of fossil energy resources imported from Russia – oil and gas. Belarus is expected to reduce its Russian gas consumption by 5 billion euros when the nuclear power plant becomes fully operational. puppy. meters per year, which is about a quarter of total annual gas imports.
The Astrava power plant opens in Belarus after high tensions following the controversial presidential elections on August 9. The opposition and western democracies consider these elections to be rigged.
Massive demonstrations have been taking place in the country for almost three months, during which Lukashenko, 66, who has led the country since 1994, has been asked to resign. He also calls for the release of political prisoners and the holding of new elections .
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