MINSK, 27 June (BelTA) - Belarus acceded to the declaration on comprehensive risk and safety assessments of nuclear plants which implies conducting stress tests, BelTA learnt from assistant to the Energy Minister of Belarus Lyudmila Zenkovich. Following a meeting on 23 June 2011, deputy energy ministers and senior officials responsible for nuclear energy in Armenia, Belarus, Croatia, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, together with the EU, reaffirmed their commitment to conduct comprehensive risk and safety assessments of nuclear plants (stress tests) in accordance with the criteria agreed upon by the European Commission and the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) on 24 May this year. The first test results will be presented at the EU summit in December. The public pushes for a consistent nuclear safety policy by all the countries possessing nuclear energy. Nuclear accidents affect neighboring states, which gives an added urgency to the issue,” the declaration reads. It emphasizes that the events in Japan demonstrate a vitally important role of nuclear safety. The signatories to the declaration agreed to commission nuclear energy operators with a task to carry out an assessment of their nuclear stations and invite national regulating bodies to present the relevant reports and use transparent expert evaluation schemes to raise the reliability and accountability of security and risk assessment. Armenia, Belarus, Croatia, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the European Union are ready to hold multilateral talks with the IAEA to define common security standards and create international systems of expert analysis. When commenting on Belarus’ accession to the joint declaration, Lyudmila Zenkovich reminded that the NPP 2006 project of the Belarusian nuclear power plant is maximally safe. It belongs to the 3+ generation. The project will be implemented using the IAEA security requirements and the stress test procedures.

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