Russian nuclear specialists eye Belarus as platform for experiments?

Andrei Azharovsky from the Moscow-based Ecozaschita (Ecodefens) told the European Radio for Belarus that one should not trust the promises of Rosatom company regarding the processing of nuclear waste from the station. The experts stressed that the type of the future station is experimental, with no such analogues around the world. Correspondingly, there are no enterprises that are able to process the nuclear fuel waste from the Belarusian nuclear power plant.
 
Sergei Novikov, Rosatom spokesperson, has responded angrily. 
 
“This is total crap! We are offering the nucelar reactor VVER-1200 to Belarus. Such stations operate in Russia, Ukraine. The last station we built is in China. It operates two VVER reactors and thy are considered the safest in the world”, he said.
 
But when we checked the web sites of Rosatom and Atomstroiexport -- the companies that built the nuclear power plants in China, we came across an allegedly small difference. The Russian nuclear experts installed VVER-1000 reactors, not VVER-1200. Andrei Azharovsky, a nuclear science expert, maintains this is where the bigget lies are hiding behind.
  
VVER stands for "water-water energy reactor" and the number means its power capacity. The Ecodefense expert notes that talking tat all water-water reactors are the same is like talking that Zaporozhets and Porshe are the same type of cars. Azharovski says it means that the Russians actually seek to build a reactor in Belarus which was never tested before.
 

It appears that the future nuclear power plant in Astravets is to turn into an experimental platform for testing a new type of nuclear reactors. The Russian nuclear officials claim this is the safest of all reactors in the world. In fact, the same words were used to describe the nuclear station in Chernobyl...




Photo by http://www.bellona.ru/