"From 12 to 16 March, experts authorized by a group of the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) will be working in Belarus in the framework of a partnership audit of Belarus' national report on the targeted reassessment of safety (stress tests) of Belarusian NPP. A delegation of 17 experts from the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group will be led by Mark Foy, a representative of the United Kingdom's Office for Nuclear Regulation", Gosatomnadzor said.
Representatives of the IAEA, Russia and Iran will participate as observers.
During the visit, the experts will clarify and discuss with the Belarusian specialists the information provided in the national report, visit the site of the construction of Belarusian NPP in Ostrovets, prepare a preliminary version of the report on the partner verification.
Presentation of the final version of the report is planned for June 2018 in Minsk during the visit to Belarus of the Council for Partnership Verification.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, within two months (from November, 132017 to January, 13 2018), the national report on the stress tests of Belarusian NPP was available for public consultations. The questions, including those received from the European regulators, non-governmental environmental organizations and public associations, were sent to ENSREG in early February 2018 by the Gosatomnadzor for the preparation of answers. Public consultation materials (in question-answer format) will be posted on the ENSREG website.
Belarus acceded to the Joint Declaration of the EU and its neighbors on the comprehensive assessment of risks and safety of nuclear power plants (stress tests) in June 2011. The Belarusian side voluntarily assumed political obligations to carry out stress tests of the NPP under construction taking into account the specifications of the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group and use the peer review system to increase confidence in the results of stress tests.
Stress tests are a one-off unscheduled reassessment of NPP safety for its resistance to extreme external environmental influences and their combination: earthquakes, floods, extreme weather conditions, etc.
In 2016, Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant carried outa self-assessment of risks and safety, the results of which were sent to the regulatory body - Gosatomnadzor. Based on the station's report, a national report on the stress tests of Belarusian NPP was prepared. The report, translated into English, was transmitted to the European Commission at the end of October 2017 for peer review in accordance with the procedure agreed upon by the parties.
The national report is available in Russian on the Gosatomnadzor website, in English – on the ENSREG website.
