Nation’s first nuclear plant, built by Russia, set to open

ASTRAVETS, Belarus — Rising from the former potato and wheat fields of a collective farm, huge towers of concrete beckon to one of Europe’s poorest countries with the promise of cheap, plentiful supplies of electricity for generations to come.

But the location of Belarus’ first nuclear power plant — an area of pristine farmland just 40 miles from the capital of neighboring Lithuania — points to calculations that go beyond just kilowatts.

The plant was built by Rosatom, a stateowned Russian nuclear conglomerate, and financed with a $10 billion credit line from Moscow. Belarus soldiers at a new military base nearby have been trained in St. Petersburg by Russia’s National Guard, a security force set up by the Kremlin in 2016.

The facility’s two reactors, set to go into operation soon, will produce far more electricity than Belarus can consume and lie far away from industrial areas eager for cheap power on the other side of the country.

Lithuania, seen as a promising potential market when planning for the plant began more than a decade ago, is so horrified by the prospect of Russiancontrolled nuclear fission on its doorstep that it has outlawed the purchase of any electricity the plant produces and started holding nuclear accident exercises.

For all the problems and protests, however, the Astravets plant is in many ways a model of success in what, under President Vladimir Putin, has become an aggressive push into foreign markets by Russia’s sprawling nuclear industry. Rosatom has secured more than 30 reactor supply deals. Last year, the company claimed it had international projects worth $202.4 billion in its portfolio.

Russia’s success — it has sold more nuclear technology abroad since Putin came to power in 1999 than the United States, France, China, South Korea and Japan combined, according to a recent study — is in part commercial, generating lucrative contracts in Europe, Asia and even Africa to sustain Rosatom’s more than 250,000 engineers, researchers, salespeople and other employees.

But it has also given Moscow a powerful geopolitical tool, locking clients like Belarus, but also members of the European Union like Hungary, into longterm dependency on Rosatom, and therefore the Russian state. That strategy seems particularly evident with plants like the one in Belarus.

Siarhei Hudzilin / New York Times A cow grazes near a nuclear plant financed with a $10 billion credit line from Moscow in Astravets.