Many years ago, there were discussions here in Luxembourg to build a nuclear power plant together with the French in the east of Luxembourg. The "greens" at that time were against it, so it was not being build.

But the french build it then in France just 10km from the border (the biggest at that time with 4 reactors), and it's closer to our capital then your nuclear power plant to yours.

The problem is - I'd trust french people, but not belarus/russia. As their quality sign - check out the cars they produce...

Well, look at the Russian space program. There haven't been any fatal accidents in the Russian/Soviet space program since 1971 as opposed to the US where the last fatal accident happened 20 years ago (Columbia accident).

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...

Columbia had 28 missions - 28 launches and 27 successful landings. There has been no Russian space vessel, that has been launched more than 1 time into space. Even Buran space shuttle had only 1 mission, before it was abandoned.

I wouldn't comment on quality of cars, as I do not own any Russian car - and I also do not own any nuclear submarine(yet), but what we know is that Russians can't properly build bunker for their own fuhrer and Nuclear plant is less significant project.

If you like questionable nucleair power plant placement, look up Chooz.

> In result we have Russian one 50km from our Capital.

And? You've been running one of the unsafest reactor designs in history and you were actually opposed to shutting it off.

You just built a brand new LNG terminal in Klaipeda [1] and, of course, having such a big plant in Belarus generating 2400 MW of carbon-free energy will mean that electricity production from LNG is getting a fierce competition.

> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaip%C4%97da_LNG_FSRU

Maybe people in Lituania changed their mind? i don’t understand your point based on what “they” choose a decade ago.

LNG does not produce any electricity, it's just a platform for gas storage and stuff. so not sure why you mix those two different things.

It doesn't matter much if the country that builds the power plant has a dictatorship or a democracy. Both political systems produced nuclear disasters.

The currently built VVER1200 NPP has pretty good safety:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#Safety_features

There are a lot of these (especially the older version of VVER1200) reactors operating in the European Union. Some of them are not too far from international borders. I think a casual Russophobia is the main driving force of the opposing voices instead of actual criticism of the VVER1200. I am not sure if Russia would want to have another nuclear disaster by not taking nuclear safety seriously. It would be really bad for business.

Some places where these VVER blocks are operating or going to operate:

VVER power stations have been mostly installed in Russia and the former Soviet Union, but also in China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, India, and Iran. Countries that are planning to introduce VVER reactors include Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.

What is the scenario that could cause a catastrophic failure in the VVER design or implementation that would result in a disaster that would create a situation to evacuate cities 50kms away?

I am truly interested in this, because I though that VVERs where designed to avoid any sort of disaster. This is why these have a pretty reliable control rod system with safety factor of 5+ and the containment block can survive a Boeing 747 flying into it. Do you think there is a real change that the reactor going super critical and exploding?

Chernobyl is the only nuclear disaster that makes me thing "hm, maybe really nobody should ever build nuclear power plants" and it occurred under a dictatorship. There have been significant disasters (Fukushima and Three Mile Island) under democracies but both of those are pretty tame compared to the ongoing harm wrought by coal and natural gas. Even if you just restrict it to direct health effects of their pollution vs. all negative health effects from Fukushima, at worst Fukushima over its lifetime likely cost fewer lives per megawatt-hour than an average coal plant.

(Of course, things like solar and wind are still generally preferable, if you can store the power effectively.)

Chernobyl had RBMK, not VVER, that's the entire point GP is making. Reducing Chernobyl/Fukushima/TMI to the difference in political systems is derailing the conversation and ignores the actual causal chain of each event.

Essentially all Fukushima related deaths were caused by the evacuation, which many now consider to have been a mistake https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b18...

While we can argue about the extent of the evacuation and the extended timeline for return to evacuated areas, the fact that there was an evacuation shouldn't be up for debate. When uncontrolled explosions happen to buildings holding nuclear reactors, regardless of the nature of those explosions, the immediate area should be evacuated.

On what basis are you claiming that?

In fully half of the INES level 7 the leading cause of death was the evacuation. Designed safety systems are really good. Evacuating should not be an unthinking decision.

Fukushima ended with very little contamination over land due to the prevailing weather at the time. But if winds and rain hadn't cooperated as nicely, things would have been more serious. So I wouldn't say evacuations were pointless. However, keeping the area off limits for as long as they did was.

Because evacuations are not done on perfect hindsight. They are done with limited and often incorrect live information. When building are collapsing atop a reactor, when nobody knows for sure what is happening inside, it is only reasonable to start moving people away.

> In fully half of the INES level 7

For anyone reading along here, this is drawn from a sample size of 2. (Fukushima and Chernobyl)

> VVER power stations have been mostly installed in Russia and the former Soviet Union, but also in China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, India, and Iran.

Not sure about the other ones, but the ones in (East) Germany were decomissioned presto after reunification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greifswald_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Germany decomissioned almost everything nuclear. Also a politically motivated move. Now they have the highest electricity prices in the EU.

VVER reactors have an overall good safety record so far, the trouble is this one seems botched.

Yeah, they are currently decommissioning all West German nuclear plants (initially announced by the Social-Democrat/Green government before 2005, then delayed by the Christian-Democrat/Social-Democrat government, then finally set to 2022 after Fukushima), but this is much later than 1990, when the Greifswald plant was decommissioned. Of course, that was only 4 years after Chernobyl, that may help explain the decision...

Both Greifswald and Rheinsberg were built according to German standards. East Germany even produced the reactor pressure vessels themselves.

Also, the blocks 5-8 in Greifswald were modern VVER-440/213 which are far more reliable and safe than for example the SWR-69 reactor types used in Neckerwestheim I, Kruemmel and Isar 1 which were all in operation until 2011.

> Not sure about the other ones, but the ones in (East) Germany were decomissioned presto after reunification

Which was completely unjustified. I visited that plant and the engineers there confirmed me that the VVER-440/213 is safer than all the BWR designs in West-Germany.

It is a law of engineering that every engineer will claim his code is the most efficient, his car the best and hist nuclear power plant the safest.

WWER-440 has no closed safety vessel, poor emergency cooling and no redundancy to speak of. It is a PWR design that is maybe on par with a poor western BWR. Also, all the reactors in West Germany were continually retrofitted, especially after the lessons learned due to Czernobyl. That wasn't feasible for a Sowjet design during the breakup of the Sowjet Union (while a lot was built in the GDR, there was also a lot that would have been imported).

> What is the scenario that could cause a catastrophic failure in the VVER design or implementation that would result in a disaster that would create a situation to evacuate cities 50kms away?

There is Neris river that is both near Astravets NPP and running through Vilnius - so it is not only 50 kms away and adds other risks.

I hope for the best but stuff like this does not give much confidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astravets_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

I agree that INES Level 7 accident (well, a disaster at this level) is very unlikely and VVER-1200 generally ought to be matching the quality of the Western designs at this point. Even if the level 7 disaster would happen, the 50 km distance is not great and it's "living on the edge", but it ought to be just about enough for the population to be okay.

However, there are some points you miss:

- There is a lot of space for smaller accidents which can happen, including nuclear fuel leaks. Belarusian Power Plant is very close to River Neris and, as far as I know, uses its water for cooling. River Neris goes through Lithuanian capital Vilnius and there is a great concern that accidents can contaminate the water.

- See my point in a post bellow about the nuclear power plants not being built equal, even if they use the same reactor technology.

- Both political systems produced nuclear disasters, but accidents above INES Level 5 only occurred in the Soviet Union; I am not including Fukushima, because its cause was a natural disaster: earthquake followed by tsunami (and their 1960s tech was still holding in the immediate aftermath). Poor quality standards, general attitude to safety, disregard to procedures, etc -- these are the common problems in such political systems like the Soviet one. Also, many of the accidents in the West occurred in 1950s when the nuclear technology was still in its early days. So, no, I don't draw the equality between different political systems in the context of nuclear safety, although perhaps it shouldn't be overestimated either.

> River Neris goes through Lithuanian capital Vilnius and there is a great concern that accidents can contaminate the water.

A power plant needs access to water for cooling. Belarus is a land-locked country without access to sea, so all of its rivers also flow through other countries. Its watershed is divided between Nemunas, Daugava, and Dnieper, which have Vilnius, Riga, and Kiev situated on them. It seems like there's no place you can build a power plant there without risking a potential contamination of water which would then run through a capital of another state.

Also, Lithuanian Ignalina power plant was using the water eventually getting into Daugava river, running through Riga, a capital of the neighboring Latvia. I can't see why Lithuania itself thinks it's ok to risk potential contamination of water of a neighboring country capital, but not ok when someone else is doing the same to them.

> Also, Lithuanian Ignalina power plant was using the water eventually getting into Daugava river, running through Riga, a capital of the neighboring Latvia. I can't see why Lithuania itself thinks it's ok to risk potential contamination of water of a neighboring country capital, but not ok when someone else is doing the same to them.

I guess under Soviet regime Lithuanians and Latvians didn’t have any say in the matter where the nuclear power plant must be built (or be built at all).

> I guess under Soviet regime Lithuanians and Latvians didn’t have any say in the matter where the nuclear power plant must be built (or be built at all).

Why didn't they shut off the plant then right after the Iron Curtain fell? In fact, they actually opposed the closure of that very plant.

I guess after that regime fell, Lithuanians had much say in whether to continue operating that plant, and between 1990 and 2009 their say was "aye".

I guess you must have a secret plan none of us are aware of on how to transition the entire country off nuclear power and diversify its energy sources overnight.

> Lithuania imports 70% of its power from Belarus, and the average price of electricity is among the highest in EU.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant#S...

"Overnight" is a straw man. If Lithuania was extremely worried about not polluting Latvia capital's river, it wouldn't take them 19 years.

Oh and polluting rivers being the only factor in this matter is not strawman? Changing entire country’s energy infrastructure takes decades, let alone absorbing that economically. Especially when you’re a newly formed country that at the same time needs to change every other aspect of itself to move from socialist to capitalist economy, society and infrastructure serving them.

Given the circumstances, I’d call 19 years a great success in this case.

You have a point here, but I think the proximity is still concerning: compare the distance between Ignalina and Riga with the distance between Belarus' Power Plant and Vilnius.

It is worth mentioning that the UN commission has decided that the location of the Belarusian power plant was chosen in violation of the Espoo Convention. That's why it's not OK.

Leningrad NPP is at about the same distance from Saint Petersburg, Kursk NPP from Kursk, etc. There's a power plant in the suburbs of Antwerp, another one in Lyon, another two near Toronto, etc. There's a French NPP 20 km from Luxembourg and a Swiss NPP on German border. What is your point here?

In the Soviet and other totalitarian systems the government could build wherever the hell they wanted, so their decision making is really far from exemplary. I have no idea why would you build an NPP so close to densely populated areas these days, if you have other options. I can see the issue in a smaller and densely populated country like Netherlands, but not in France which is quite more spacious.

A hundred years ago you could happily buy all sorts of drugs in your local pharmacy, but it doesn't mean it was healthy for people. We came a long way with the safety standards and general attitude towards safety. So, the point here is: embrace it instead of looking for excuses. There really were better sites to build the Belarusian NPP, but they built it in violation of the Espoo convention instead of embracing safety and cooperation with your neighbours.

P.S. It is an official recommendation by the Association of Regulators of Western Europe (WENRA) to avoid building NPPs closer than 100 km to the big cities. WENRA was established in 1999, though, so it's relatively recent.

I don't know whether Belarus signed the Espoo convention, or is a member of Association of Regulators of Western Europe, etc.. If your point is, "why don't my neighbours play according to my rules", I can see where you're coming from, but not necessarily agree.

Belarus suffered the most from Chernobyl accident, with 70% of fallout in its territory. And Chernobyl NPP wasn't even in their country. I might think that they are well positioned to do everything they can to prevent any nuclear accident happening in their NPP.

Leningrad NPP close to Saint Petersburg is inside same Russia. same with Kursk. Russia can do whatever they want inside their country. biggest issue I see here is that NPP is built close to other countries' border, very close to capital of other country despite all neighbor's objections.

that is main issue.