Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is mulling the idea of building a second nuclear power plant (NPP) to improve the country’s energy security and earn more money from exports to Russia.

Lukashenko is due to discuss the project with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Telegram channel linked to the Belarusian leader’s press service.

"In the near future, we will discuss the construction of a second nuclear power plant in Belarus with the President of Russia," Lukashenko said during a visit to the Minsk Automobile Plant.

While the exact location for the potential facility has not yet been determined, Lukashenko said that several possible sites are under consideration. He pointed to the growing domestic demand for power as the driving force behind the project, and increased consumption in both industrial sectors and among citizens.

The country’s first controversial NPP, Ostrovets (aka Astravets in Lithuanian) in the Grodno region, was financed and built by Russia using the Russian AES-2006 standard design supplied by the Russian state-owned company Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

Ostrovets caused a storm of protest, as it is located only 65 km from the Lithuanian border and the legacy of the Chernobyl meltdown has raised question over the quality and safety of the plant.

Russia has upgraded its technology since Chernobyl and is currently seen as a world leader in the technology. Russian nuclear power exports are booming as a cheap and reliable alternative to the more expensive Western systems. Russia has also been actively developing small modular reactors (SMRs) that are becoming increasingly popular, especially in Emerging Markets.

The Kremlin is pushing the exports of its nuclear technology for political reasons too, as uranium is the new gas and typically binds a client country to 60-year Russian fuel supplies and maintenance contracts, creating a dependency in the same way gas exports used to be used as a geopolitical tool.

Rosatom director general Alexey Likhachev has already expressed Russia’s willingness to undertake the construction of a second plant if Belarus decides to move forward, TASS reports.

Ostrovets was built to meet Belarus’ domestic demand and reduce its reliance on Russian imported gas for energy. However, Minsk was hoping to export power to the Baltic states. Since the annexation of Crimea by Russia, relations between Belarus and Baltics have cooled, but the Baltics and Ukraine have remained dependent on Belarusian power exports. Just before the war in Ukraine started, both Lithuania and Ukraine imported record amounts of nuclear power from Belarus during an especially cold winter, despite pledging to cut electricity network ties.

Indeed, after protesting against Belarusian power supplies, the Baltics have still not cut power ties with the Baltics. While the Baltics have taken steps to reduce reliance on Belarusian energy and synchronise their power grids with the European Union by 2025, they are still technically connected to the Russian and Belarusian grids via the BRELL (Belarus-Russia-Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania) energy ring.

As of January 2025, Ukraine is not importing electricity from Belarus, after cutting ties following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, aided by Belarus.

Lukashenko also has his eye on exports of power to Russia, which is also in the midst of a massive project to expand its power generation capacity, relying heavily on NPPs.

In August last year, Lukashenko and Putin agreed to set up a single energy market as part of the development of the “Union State ” agreed in 1999. However, progress on the idea stalled at the last round of talks in December, as the difference between the price of power in the two countries is too large and neither side is willing to compromise.

Belarus remains deeply reliant on Russia for energy infrastructure. The Ostrovets plant was a flagship project in Belarus’ energy diversification strategy, reducing dependence on imported natural gas, but Lukashenko has just replaced reliance on gas with reliance on Russian uranium and technology. A second plant would further solidify nuclear power’s role in meeting Belarus’ energy demands but not reduce its dependence on Russia.