Baltic leaders lobby new nuclear plant

March 8, 2012

VILNIUS, Lithuania—The leaders of the three Baltics states on Thursday urged energy companies to reach an agreement on a new nuclear power plant seen as crucial in ensuring the region's independence from Russian energy supplies.

The project was originally announced six years ago in hopes to quickly replace a Soviet-era, Chernobyl-style nuclear plant in Lithuania that was shut down in 2009 due to safety concerns. But the euro5 billion ($6.5 billion) project has run into several obstacles, particularly disagreements over how to divide the plant's output.

The U.S.-Japanese consortium Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy was brought on board last year as a strategic partner, and prime ministers from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia urged all sides to complete negotiations by June.

"The energy companies have indicated what amounts of energy they expect from the nuclear power plant," Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius told a press conference. "This makes me believe that further negotiations will be smooth and rapid."

The prime ministers also said they would seek European Union funding and ask Poland to consider to rejoining the project.

Poland had been a participant to negotiations for years but withdrew in December to focus on constructing its first nuclear power plant.

The Baltic leaders refused to comment how the output of the project 1,300 megawatt plant would be divvied up, but Estonia's Andrus Ansip said Estonia expected some 300 megawatts.

Success of the new plant, which would be built next to the shuttered Chernobyl-type facility in Visaginas in northeast Lithuania, is also crucial given that Russia and Belarus are both building large nuclear power stations right across the border from Lithuania.

Lithuanian officials have slammed the neighbors' projects are environmentally unsound and have threatened to place on ban on exporting output from these plants to the Lithuanian market.

Russia hopes to complete its first reactor in the Kaliningrad region in 2016, while Belarus' plant, which Russia will build, will likely be launched in 2017.

Lithuania's facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.

Russia Pitches Baltic Nuclear Plant to Europe

MOSCOW, February 27 (RIA Novosti)

Russia is holding talks with European energy companies on building the Baltic nuclear power plant in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, the press office of Russia’s civilian nuclear power corporation Rosatom said on Monday.

“Currently, talks are underway with some major west European energy companies that have displayed serious interest in joining the project to build the Baltic NPP,” the press office quoted Sergei Boyarkin, director of the Rosatom program for managing engineering projects, as saying at a roundtable in the Latvian capital on nuclear power development in the Baltic region.

Russia started the construction of the two-unit Baltic Power Plant in Kaliningrad in 2010 a bid to combat an increasing energy crisis in the region. The units will each have 1,194 MW of capacity.

The first unit is to go into service in 2017. The construction of the second unit is planned to begin in 2012 and be completed in 2018. Each unit will have a service life of 60 years.