The second unit of the Belarus NPP will be commissioned in 2022, Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on 10 August. Alexander Lokshin, first deputy general director of Rosatom for operational management said work was on schedule, and the unit “should be delivered to the customer in the middle of 2022”. 

Earlier on 7 August, the loading of nuclear fuel began at unit 1, which is scheduled for grid connection in the fourth quarter of this year, according to the Ministry of Energy of Belarus. The Ministry noted that the plant will provide about a third of Belarus’s domestic needs for electricity, replace 4.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year, and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7 million tons. In addition, the project will open up new opportunities for the introduction of advanced technologies in energy, industry, science, medicine, and will become an incentive for the development of electric transport.

The Belarus NPP, with two VVER-1200 reactors (total capacity 2,400 MWe) is being built according to the Russian AES-2006 project financed by a Russian state loan of $10 billion near the town of Ostrovets, Grodno Region. The general contractor is Atomstroyexport (part of Rosatom).