International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi visited Belarus for high-level meetings in the capital Minsk as well as a visit to the country’s NPP in Ostrovets, IAEA said.
He met with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in Minsk. “The Belarusian people and I are very impressed by your active work, the work of the organisation recently, Lukashenko said. “We are familiar with your statements and findings. We very positively assess your work related to the security and safety of nuclear power plants, especially those that have found themselves in the war zone – the Zaporizhia NPP and Kursk NPP.”
The President recalled that Belarus has been the IAEA member since the organisation was established. He emphasised that Belarus is committed to security and peace. “We will do our utmost in order to ensure regional nuclear safety. Please rest assured. We are rational people and we do not rush into any kind of adventures.”
The President added that he had raised the topic for a reason, citing the recent statements made in Ukraine that “Lukashenko wanted to seize the Chornobyl plant”. He added: “I just cannot understand the idea behind such statements. Why would Lukashenko need the Chornobyl plant? We suffered a lot after the explosion of this nuclear power plant, which, by the way, we did not build, we did not maintain and we did not blow up.”
He explained that a quarter of the Belarusian land was affected. “We are still doing our best to mitigate the consequences of the Chornobyl disaster. I would like to assure you that this is a complete nonsense, which surprised me a lot. We cannot even imagine that we may have to ‘seize’ the Chornobyl plant and take responsibility for it. There is no such necessity on the part of Belarus.”
During Grossi’s working visit to the Belarus NPP, Belarus Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Karankevich expressed interested in further developing interaction with the Agency, “including in new areas such as management of radioactive waste”.
Belarus is looking to implement a major construction project to create a radioactive waste disposal facility, he said. “We would be very grateful to you for any possible assistance in building this facility. All in all, we are interested in using the entire toolkit of IAEA capabilities for studying the world’s best practices,” Karankevich said.
Researched and written by Judith Perera
