Lithuania’s Radiation Protection Centre said Thursday that no change in radiation levels has been detected in the country following the shutdown of a reactor at the Astravyets Nuclear Power Plant in Belarus late Wednesday.
“We are conducting radiological environmental monitoring – all of our stations are operational today, we have connections with all of them, and the radiation background has not changed. Our aerosol monitoring stations also show no anomalies,” Julius Žiliukas, head of the Centre’s Expertise and Exposure Monitoring Department, told LRT RADIO.
“The background shows that there are no changes and no emissions into the environment – at least none that have reached Lithuania,” he added.
Reuters reported that the second of the two reactors at Belarus’s only nuclear power plant was disconnected from the grid Wednesday night after an alarm was triggered, indicating an anomaly in the cooling system of the plant’s non-nuclear section.
The plant, located in the town of Astravyets just 20 kilometres from the Lithuanian border and 50 kilometres from Vilnius, has faced criticism from neighbouring countries and international organisations over safety concerns.
Žiliukas noted that in the event of an incident involving radioactive release and depending on wind direction, contamination could reach the Lithuanian border within an hour and the capital, Vilnius, within three hours.
“If the wind is blowing directly from the plant toward Lithuania, contamination could be detected later,” he said.
According to Žiliukas, Lithuanian authorities have not received any direct communication from Belarusian officials regarding the incident.
“We haven’t received any official signal – what we know, we know from media reports. From what we understand, it was not a failure in the nuclear part of the reactor,” he said.
The second reactor was connected to Belarus’s power grid in 2023, while the first began operating in 2020.
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