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The Belarusian government's plans to build a nuclear power plant are fraught with "multiple troubles and ordeals for the people," Belarusian expert Heorhiy Lepin said at an international conference in Vilnius on October 9. He described nuclear energy programs as "the most costly and the most hazardous of all power generation technologies." "This danger is connected not only with the possibility of accidents: a nuclear reactor pollutes the environment during its routine operation," Dr. Lepin said. The professor stressed that nuclear power projects were inefficient because of high construction costs and the high cost of power generation. Nuclear fuel currently costs nearly 20 times as much as it did in 2000, he said, describing the disposal of nuclear waste as a "very expensive and very dangerous problem."

The Belarusian government's report on the possible environmental impact of its future nuclear power plant does not address key issues, Russian environmental activist Andrei Ozharovsky said in an interview with BelaPAN. "It is a sloppy, incomplete and misleading report," Mr. Ozharovsky said. "The document gives the impression that it is not the result of an unbiased assessment but just the parroting of some campaign slogans provided to the Belarusian authors by Russia`s Rosatom nuclear energy corporation." "The 130-page report does not assess the impact of nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel management," he said. "Neither does it assess the plant's impact following its closure." The report was under discussion at a meeting held at the Belarusian environmental protection ministry on Friday. Mr. Ozharovsky, coordinator of the Moscow-based Ecozashchita (Eco Protection) group, took part in the discussion of the ministry's Public Coordination Environmental Council.

Children affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have resumed respite trips to the UK after the resolution of a long diplomatic row with Belarus. The eight-month ban was lifted in May following talks between the two countries, the Home Office has said. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko stopped all foreign trips after a 16-year-old girl who visited California refused to return home. Every year hundreds of children around Chernobyl are diagnosed with cancer.

"Lithuania expressed its official disapproval of a plan pushed aggressively by the neighbouring Belarus to build a nuclear power plant (NPP) in the Belarusian town of Ostrovets, just 55 kilometres away from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. The former Soviet republic's concerns were stated in an official note that was prepared by the Ministry of Environment and will be extended to Minsk, said the Lithuanian news agency DELFI.lt Bellona, 08/05-2010 Lithuania's note of concern states, in particular, that Minsk has yet to deliver a comprehensive environmental impact evaluation report on the future NPP and asks that Belarusian officials hold a new hearing in Lithuania where such information may be made available to the public. Belarus, however, is not obligated to take Lithuania's opinion into account, DELFI.lt reported. "