The Lithuanian State Inspectorate for the Safety of Nuclear Energy (GIBAE) last Thursday sent a letter to the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Belarus with a call to stop the operation and production of the first and second power units of the Belarusian nuclear power plant in Astravets, Lithuanian media reported.. The Belarusian city of Ostrovets is located less than 20 kilometers from Lithuania.

The power plant is asked not to operate until all nuclear safety issues are resolved. GIBAE recalled that it is still waiting for an answer to safety issues related to site selection and evaluation, the resistance of certain safety-critical equipment of the Belarusian NPP to seismic events and the consequences of a large commercial aircraft crash, the implementation of recommendations on stress tests, fire risk assessment, etc..

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" GIBAE also calls on the Ministry of Emergency Situations and other responsible institutions of Belarus to publish the recommendations made during international expert missions and the results of their implementation, to provide additional information that is necessary for more accurate prediction of possible accidental releases,"

Copies of the letter were sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Commission, the European Nuclear Safety Regulatory Group (ENSREG) and the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA). According to the program of phased power start-up, on May 13, the second power unit of the Belarusian NPP was connected to the grid for the first time - it supplied the first kilowatt-hours of electricity to the country's unified energy system.

Recall that at the end of 2022, there were often reports in the media that the Russian special services were planning provocations at critical infrastructure facilities in Belarus, including the Belarusian nuclear power plant, in order to accuse Ukraine and NATO. In response to these reports, Ukrainian intelligence recalled that the Ostrovets nuclear power plant was built in 2020 according to a Russian project and with Russian money..