Łukašenka approves nuclear waste deal with Russia

May 11, BPN. On May 5, Alaksandr Łukašenka signed a law ratifying a nuclear waste deal with Russia and instructed the government to implement it, says a document published on the National Legal Internet Portal on May 11.

The agreement sets out procedures for transporting spent nuclear fuel to Russia, storing and reprocessing it there, and returning nuclear waste back to Belarus. 

The Belarusian Ministry of Energy and Russia’s Rosatom are supposed to handpick organizations authorized to hire contractors to transport and reprocess irradiated fuel assemblies.

Belarusian Energy Minister Viktar Karankievič and Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev signed the agreement on cooperation in spent nuclear fuel management in Sochi on November 21, 2022.

Both houses of the Belarusian National Assembly approved it in mid-April.

Back in March 2011, Minsk and Moscow agreed that the spent fuel from the Belarusian power plant would be returned to Russia for reprocessing. In August 2019, the Council of Ministers approved a strategy for handling spent nuclear fuel, prioritizing its reprocessing in Russia, with waste returning to Belarus.

In November 2021, the governments signed an agreement on cooperation in the transportation of nuclear materials. It came into force on May 31, 2022.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is located near Astraviec, Hrodna region, some 10 miles away from the Lithuanian border. It has been built with a Russian loan. Vilnius views the plant as unsafe and describes it as a “geopolitical weapon.”