Lithuania calls on International Atomic Energy Agency to take action to solve safety issues of Ostrovets NPP
On 24 May, ambassador A. Taurantas handed a letter from the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Energy of Lithuania to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about unresolved nuclear safety issues of the Ostrovets NPP project in Belarus.
In the joint letter, ministers express their concern over a failure by Belarus to implement the recommendations and conclusions made by international experts in the framework of the IAEA, Espoo Convention and EU’s stress tests.
Lithuania consistently and actively raises questions about the environmental impact, nuclear and radiation protection of the Ostrovets NPP with the EU, UN, IAEA and other organisations. The EU peer review report on stress tests on the Ostrovets NPP, which was published in July 2018, identified serious safety deficiencies and made recommendations for their removal. Despite the EU‘s repeated call on Belarus to present a National Action Plan for addressing the identified shortcomings, the country has so far failed to come up with such a plan. Belarus continues to deny obvious facts and international decisions.
In February, the Meeting of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context (the Espoo Convention) decided that Belarus had failed to justify the selection of the construction site for the Ostrovets NPP and, thus, violated three articles of the Espoo Convention.
The letter draws attention to the fact that Belarus has so far not fully implemented the recommendations made in the conclusions of the IAEA‘s missions in 2012, 2016, and 2018. For example, Belarus has not joined the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material; gaps remain in the regulatory and supervisory framework for nuclear safety; emergency preparedness regulation system in Belarus does not meet the IAEA‘s latest safety standards (that were upgraded after the Fukushima accident). In addition, the IAEA‘s site inspection mission in 2017 was limited by Belarus itself and did not assess selection criteria for the Ostrovets NPP.
In the letter ministers proposed to discuss and prepare a special guidance in the form of an integrated IAEA services package (including full scope of specialized IAEA missions; follow-up missions, etc.) for newcomer countries.
