Brussels, 23/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - During his visit to Vilnius on Monday 22 February, the Vice-President of the Commission with responsibility for the Energy Union, Maros Sefcovic, assured the Lithuanian government that the Commission would require Belarus to carry out a stress test on the nuclear power station currently being built at Astravyets, near the border with Lithuania, to determine the safety of the future installation.
“We are following certain international principles and international approaches and I believe that after the tragedies of Fukushima, all of Europe needs to require nuclear stress tests. With Belarus, we are doing the same thing, stress tests need to be carried out to reinforce confidence in the safety of this nuclear power station”, Sefcovic told the press, relayed by the local media.
The Commission is continuing its talks with Minsk and is sharing all information received regarding the Astravyets nuclear power station with all member states of the EU, including Lithuania, he clarified. “I have promised the President, Dalia Grybauskaite, and the Prime Minister, Algirdas Butkevicius, that we would continue our contacts with the Belarusian government in order to ensure that all safety standards are being complied with. We are prepared to offer Belarus our technical support”, he added.
Some countries which are party to the Espoo Convention are concerned that the planned Astravyets power station does not comply with the strictest nuclear safety requirements. Lithuania has criticised Belarus on a number of occasions over its inability to guarantee the safety of its installation, which is close to the Lithuanian border. For its part, Minsk stresses that it is implementing the highest safety standards.
Stress tests on all EU power stations (plus those of Switzerland and Ukraine), which were carried out in the light of the nuclear power station disaster at Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011, aim to verify whether the safety standards implemented in nuclear installations comply with all relevant requirements. They measure the capacity of these installations to ride out various risks (earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, terrorist attacks, aeroplane crashes, etc.). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)