“Within the next month any company can offer Belarus its services related to the construction of the nuclear power plant,” said President Alexander Lukashenko on 30 June at the meeting on the nuclear power plant construction in Belarus. “We are doing so in order to avoid any speculation that we have supposedly, behind the scenes, concluded a construction agreement with someone,” the President added.

Alexander Lukashenko said there was a need once again to make an official offer to the French and German company, to Japanese, Americans and Russians to participate in the construction of the plant if they were interested. “We are making the offer to them openly, and in a month we will openly publish their decision in newspapers. No one will make a profit on this issue. No way,” the Head of State warned.

Choosing partners for this project, Belarus proceeds from the fact that today most popular reactors are water-cooled reactors and pressurised water reactors. 78 per cent of nuclear power units today are water-cooled reactors of the third generation. There are only three companies in the world – a US company, a French and German company and a Russian company – that produce the reactors of this type.

The President stressed that Belarus would build the safest nuclear power plant. “We have given this promise to our people, and we will keep this promise: we will have the safest state of the art nuclear power plant, built to the latest technology,” said the Head of State. The President said he was not happy at all with the way in which the authorities were carrying out explanatory work with the population in the districts were the power plant could possibly stand. According to Alexander Lukashenko, the explanatory work with the people should be carried out in a proper way, one should explain to them what nuclear energy is, including by citing examples of other countries. The President cited Russia as an example, which had enough energy production facilities and resources, but which planned to build 20 nuclear power plants more in the near future. He also pointed to Europe where several dozens of these facilities would spring up.