The Belarusian Emergency Situations Ministry expects to sign a nuclear security regulatory agreement with Russia's Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear and Radiation Safety (Gosatomnadzor) within a few days, Belarusian Department for Nuclear and Radiation Safety head Olga Lugovskaya told a press briefing in Minsk on Tuesday.
In her words, the Russian inspectorate could not oversee the activity
done on foreign territory but it was rendering technical support to
Belarusian specialists via its subsidiaries.
Only Belarusian specialists are presently supervising the
construction of the Belarusian nuclear power plant, Lugovskaya said.
“This is the issue of the country on the territory of which construction
works are being done. We do not shift our responsibility on anyone but
we stay in touch with our Russian colleagues. We expect to start this
cooperation in 2014, and Russian specialists may even be present on the
construction site,” she said.
Also, Russian specialists will visit Belarus on inspection missions, she continued.
Belarusian specialists were trained at the unfinished Novovoronezh
nuclear power plant in 2013. “We visited the construction site and our
specialists toured it together with experienced Russian colleagues and
asked their questions. Hopefully, the scale of assistance will be
growing,” she said.
