ENERGO: Belarus’ Russian-built nuclear power plant leak in February 2022 reported

Leaked documents seen by Bloomberg suggest that there was an incident at Belarus’ Russian-built Ostrovets (aka Astravets in Lithuanian) nuclear power plant (NPP) in February 2022.

The documents detail a safety incident at Ostrovets NPP, raising concerns about the plant's operational integrity. The documents, sourced from Rosatom, the Russian nuclear giant, indicate a problem involving a leak of ion-exchange resin into the primary reactor circuit during a test run of the plant's second 1,200-MW reactor.

According to the report, on February 25, 2022, engineers discovered the resin, responsible for maintaining water purity in the cooling systems, seeping into the main circuit. This raised fears of a potential loss of reactor control and the risk of a meltdown in a repeat of the Chernobyl reactor in 1986 that affected all of Europe. The Ostrovets incident led to a suspension of the test run, delaying the commercial operation of the reactor by over a year, as bne IntelliNews reported at the time.