Discussions are underway in Minsk as representatives of Irish biofuel company Greenfield Project Management finalize plans for bioethanol production which they hope will later be used to remediate radioactive contamination from areas of Belarus which received 80% of the Chernobyl fall-out.
The company's initial plan is a joint venture with local company Belbiopharm to build a 650m litre bioethanol plant before 2010.
Initially the feedstock will be grown on uncontaminated land, taking up contaminants in roots and stalks, but it hopes to grow it on contaminated sites after field trials.
It says using such sites would have the advantage of growing biofuels without taking land used for food production.
Suppliers of grain and sugar beet have been lined up to provide feedstocks.
The plant at Mozyr will be built in three phases and will produce bioethanol, biogas and combined heat and power.
Greenfield says radioactive isotopes, mainly Cs137 and Sr90, can be removed from the soil in as little as 30 years, compared to 300-600 through natural attenuation.
It believes technologies will be developed so that cellulose biomass of all kinds can supplement the grain, sugar beet or sugar cane it now proposes to use.
The big question, of course, is what happens to the contaminants in this process.
The company is on record as saying they will end up in ash but the International Atomic Energy Authority was quoted as saying Belarus has no means of disposing of such material at this stage.
