Lithuanian government approves law on Baltic nuclear plant

Mar 28, 2007, 14:59 GMT

Vilnius - The Lithuanian government approved Wednesday a draught law on the construction of a nuclear power plant to serve its own and its neighbours' markets, the economy ministry announced.

Lithuania supports the project 'to secure supplies of energy from diverse, secure, sustainable energy sources which do not emit greenhouse gases, and support future economic growth,' the draught law runs.

It paves the way for the construction of a power plant on the site of a Soviet-era reactor at Ignalina, near the Belarusian border. That reactor is due to close in 2009, leaving Lithuania exposed to a potentially serious energy shortfall.

The draught law aims 'at substituting the power generation sources to be lost as a result of decommissioning the Ignalina nuclear power plant,' its preamble notes.

The project was initially conceived as a joint venture between the three Baltic states, who are all eager to reduce their current energy dependence on Russian sources.

Late last year Lithuania's neighbour Poland also signed up to join the project, and to build an energy transmission cable linking the two states. Such a link had often been debated in the past, but had never progressed beyond the discussion stage.

In recent weeks, however, debate has shifted to the purpose and scale of the new plant. Initial proposals foresaw a plant of up to 1,600 megawatts capacity - similar to the current Ignalina plant.

But recent proposals to double that target have met with criticism in Lithuania's Baltic neighbours.

'The most recent proposals represent a change in the original thinking, which was for a project that would guarantee our energy security, not a commercial project,' Andris Siksnis, spokesman for Latvian power monopoly Latvenergo, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'If we're talking about a 3,000-megawatt plant, that's more a commercial project,' he added.

And questions have also been asked about the practicality of constructing such a large plant.

'We have to think whether our other transmission systems are prepared to take that volume. That's the unanswered question,' Siksnis said.

There is time for debate, however. The draught law still has to win parliamentary approval, and any future plant is not expected to come online before 2015.