13:52 04.01.2016

Project to build new NPP in Lithuania still on agenda

2 min read
Project to build new NPP in Lithuania still on agenda

A project to build a new nuclear power plant (NPP) in Lithuania has not been put on the shelf, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius has said.

This year, ministers from the three Baltic countries will continue to discuss the possibility of implementing such a joint project, which may cost billions, he said.

"The Visaginas NPP issue has not been put aside. This year, the energy minister will meet with the energy ministers of Latvia and Estonia to discuss this," Butkevicius said at his annual press conference in Vilnius on Monday.

"You must have heard that, when a session of the Baltic Council of Ministers was held, the premier of Estonia said that he wanted to see final economic calculations. We provided all information and answered all the questions, and we hope to receive the answers in the near future," he said.

Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas said in Vilnius in December that Tallinn was not refusing to take part in a NPP project, but it first wanted to make sure that this project would be economically feasible.

Politicians have been insisting fore several years that all aspects of such projects should be thoroughly calculated.

In actual fact, there have been no such talks between the Baltic countries after the Lithuanian population rejected a project to build a new NPP in the country during a referendum held in 2012.

Lithuania's current government, which came to power immediately after the 2012 referendum, has repeatedly given new dates when decisions concerning the Visaginas NPP were supposed to be adopted, but no such decisions have been made.

In 2011, Lithuania selected Japan's Hitachi as a strategic investor in the NPP project.

Media reported earlier that the Lithuanian Energy Ministry had started to calculate whether Lithuania would be able to build its new nuclear power plant with the help of Hitachi alone.

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