Lithuania to hold a consultative vote on nuclear plant

(Reuters) - Lithuania will hold a non-binding referendum on the centre-right government's planned new nuclear power plant on the same day as a parliamentary election, in a move that could boost support for the opposition and derail the project with a big vote against.

Parliament's decision on Monday to hold the vote puts energy issues at the centre of the election, with the opposition and government split on how to reduce country's energy dependence on its former Soviet master, Russia.

Polls have showed public support for nuclear energy in Lithuania wane following the Fukushima disaster in 2011 in Japan, with opinion now roughly divided.

The government has proposed building the Visaginas plant on the site of the Ignalina plant in eastern Lithuania that was shut in 2009.

But the main opposition party in the current parliament, the Social Democrat Party, said the government should focus on renewable resources and renovating houses to save energy and rather than on a costly nuclear power plant project.

"We should stop dreaming about nuclear power, benefits of which we might see or might not see in only 30 years," Birute Vesaite, deputy chair of the party, told parliament.

READ MORE...

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.