Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)

     The cooling towers of the new Belarus nuclear power plant are just visible from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The authorities in Vilnius are very concerned about threats to the Neris river that flows though Vilnius because its waters will be used to cool the Belarus reactors.
     Analysts say that the construction of the Ostrovets plant has been obscured by Soviet-style secrecy. In 2017, the authorities in Belarus refused to grant access to the plant by members of the European Parliament. 
     Žygimantas Vaičiūnas is the former energy minister of Lithuania. He came up with a very unconventional means to circumvent the secrecy and view the construction work. He and Maros Sefcovic, a European Union commissioner, took a ride in a hot-air balloon in order to observe the nuclear plant site from Lithuanian airspace.
     The same year that Vaičiūnas took his balloon flight, workers at the Ostrovets site dropped the reactor vessel while transporting it at night. Rosatom and the Belarusian authorities tried to cover up the accident for weeks until information about it leaked to the press and officials were forced to confirm it.
     At a cost of forty million dollars, a new reactor vessel was brought from Russia. It collided with a railway pylon while it was being transported but was ultimately installed. Ozharovsky said, “To keep mum is typical of Rosatom. There were huge violations during the construction of the Leningrad NPP. There is evidence that some equipment elements that are supposed to be airtight to contain radioactivity were made with violations, with the falsification of documentation. I am not surprised if the same is happening in Belarus.”
      In March of 2019, construction worker Dmitry Kunets fell from a one-hundred-foot height while installing a pipeline. He was working without any safety equipment, but he did survive the fall. Natalia Yasevich is the state inspector of labor. In the incident report, she confirmed that “the accident was caused by a violation of safety standards by the management of the site and a failure to control the work performance at this height.”
      Kunets was accused of being drunk at work and ultimately resigned. He said, “I filed a complaint with a court demanding my employer be held liable for defamation, but they rejected my claim. They slapped me with an administrative penalty when I was in a critical condition in hospital. No one has been brought to justice.”
     Tatyana Novikova is anti-nuclear activist. She said, “It is impossible to control the quality of construction at the Ostrovets plant as it is not transparent. There are reports of regular violations of safety and workers’ rights. People work 12 hours per day, seven days a week. It is hard to draw any conclusions about the quality of the work performed in such conditions.”
     The economic future of the Ostrovets plant is uncertain. It was originally constructed for the purpose of exporting cheap electricity to the Baltic market. However, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are in the process of synchronizing with the European power grid which should be completed in 2025. They are also disengaging with the Russian grid. This has changed the situation enormously.
     The Baltic states have made it very clear that they intend to ban the import of any electricity produced Ostrovets. The only manner in which Belarus can access the Baltic energy market is to mask electricity exports as Russian by using an intermediate company.