No radiation risks at Astravyets N-plant site - Latvian environmental service

The reports about an alleged incident in the Astravyets nuclear power plant which is currently being built in Minsk are alarming but there is no radiation risk because the power plant is still under construction, a representative of the Latvian State Environmental Service (VVD), Julija Nikitina, told BNS.

"Considering that the power plant is still under construction, there is no nuclear fuel or any other material there that could create radiation risks,” she said, adding that this was rather a matter of construction quality that Belarus should address.

The construction process of such facilities is supervised not only on the national but also on the international level, and Belarus is co-ordinating all activities with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Nikitina said.

As the would-be nuclear power plant is located not far from Latvian and Lithuanian borders and its cooling system will use water from the Neris River which flows through the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, any reports about incidents at Astravyets are alarming, the environmental expert said.

Lithuania on Wednesday handed a diplomatic note to Belarus over an alleged incident on the Astravyets nuclear power plant construction site, just 50 kilometres from Vilnius.

"We have requested information about an incident that could have taken place and underlined once again that we want more transparency in this process. That would be the second incident — we do not know if it really took place — and we want information," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told BNS earlier.

According to Linkevicius, Lyudmila Tatarinovich, the charge d'affaires of Belarus' embassy to Lithuania, who was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, said that no incident had occurred at Astravyets.