Nuclear waste should not weigh on state budget – Łukašenka

September 9, BPN. Handling spent fuel from the Belarusian nuclear power plant (NPP) should not be “a burden for the budget” or the ministries, Alaksandr Łukašenka said at the meeting with the government officials.

He said that the government had decided that a “so called national operator will build disposal facilities for radioactive waste and will fully manage this process,” Łukašenka’s press office quoted him as saying.

Back in 2011, Minsk and Moscow agreed that spent fuel from the Belarusian NPP should be returned to Russia for reprocessing. In 2021, Belarusian and Russian governments signed an agreement regulating the transportation of nuclear materials. It entered into force on May 31, 2022. Belarus has not yet signed an agreement with Moscow on the transportation of spent fuel to Russia for processing.