MINSK, May 31 (Itar-Tass) – Russia and Belarus have initialed a master contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus, Sergei Kiriyenko, the director of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom told Itar-Tass.
“Organizations on both sides on Thursday initialed a master contract for the major installations to be built at /the compound of/ the plant,” Kiriyenko said. “This means that the whole process of coordination is over.”
Russia and Belarus proceed from the assumption that the contract will be signed as early as in June, he said.
“This may be held simultaneously with the ceremony of laying the capsule into the foundation of the future plant,” he said, adding that the sides have a full mutual understanding on the issue.
“The contract is really very expansive and the amounts of work to be done are really very big,” Kiriyenko said. “We’re acting in strict compliance with our obligations.”
Earlier reports indicated that construction works at the site of the plant in the Ostrovets district, located in the north of the Grodno region not far from the Belarusian-Lithuanian state border, will begin this summer.
The engineering and industrial infrastructure necessary for the project has already been set up there.
The infrastructural development project includes a 32-kilometers-long railway line, an automobile road and a town for workers and the plant’s personnel that have been built.
Plans suggest that the first power generating unit of the plant will come on stream in 2017 and the second unit, about two years later.
The generating units will have the latest-generation water-cooled water-moderated VVER reactors that have been installed at the Tianwan nuclear plant in China, which the International Atomic Energy Agency has named the safest nuclear power engineering facility in the world.
Russia is issuing a state export loan of up to $ 10 billion to Belarus against this construction project.