MINSK, 9 March (BelTA) - Belarus has made extensive efforts to ensure the safety of the nuclear power plant which is currently under construction in the country, Belarus' Managing Director, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Valentin Rybakov said when speaking at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting, which began on 7 March at the Agency's headquarters in Vienna, BelTA learned from the Belarusian Embassy in Austria.
“When speaking on the strengthening of the Agency's activities related to nuclear safety, Valentin Rybakov said that in the context of the national nuclear energy program Belarus has made extensive efforts to ensure the safety of the nuclear power plant which is currently under construction. Considerable attention is paid to the development of regulatory infrastructure in general and strengthening the capacity of the regulator in particular. In this connection, Belarus seeks to make maximum use of the capabilities and tools provided by the Agency,” the diplomatic mission said.
The strengthening of the regulatory authority is one of the main areas of interaction between Belarus and the IAEA within the framework of the technical cooperation program. Before the commissioning of the first unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant Belarus will host a series of IAEA assessment missions, the first of which will be the regulatory infrastructure assessment mission in October 2016. Valentin Rybakov expressed confidence that the results of this mission will make a serious contribution to the ongoing work in the country to ensure nuclear safety.
Nuclear safety was one of the central themes of the meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors.
In his opening statement, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano noted that this week, we mark the fifth anniversary of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. On April 26, it will be 30 years since the Chernobyl accident.
According to the head of the IAEA, there is widespread recognition that everything humanly possible must be done to ensure that no such accident ever happens again. “This is all the more essential as global use of nuclear power is likely to continue to grow in the coming decades," he said.
The Nuclear Safety Review 2016, which was discussed at the meeting of the Agency's Board of Governors, shows that progress continues to be made in strengthening nuclear safety. However, there can be no grounds for complacency about nuclear safety in any country, Mr Yukiya Amano stressed.
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