Vilnius given deadline for nuclear closure

Date: 11/02/1999

By Simon Taylor

LITHUANIAN MPs will have to approve plans to close the high-risk Ignalina nuclear plant by 2005 if Vilnius wants to start negotiations on joining the EU this year.

That is the tough message delivered to Lithuania by the European Commission in recent discussions on shutting down the atomic plant.

Two high-ranking political delegations from Vilnius have been told that any delay would jeopardise Lithuania's hopes of starting talks on the terms for its entry to the Union before the end of 1999.

"If there is no closure of Ignalina as soon as possible, it could cause problems with accession," said a spokesman for Energy Commissioner Christos Papoutsis following a meeting with Lithuania's Minister for Economics Vincas Babilius last week.

Babilius was in Brussels to present Lithuania's energy strategy, which outlined two options for the fate of the reactor.

The design of Ignalina is the same as the atomic plant in Chernobyl which exploded in 1986, and is seen by international nuclear safety experts as "an accident waiting to happen".

Babilius said that closing the plant by the original deadline of 2005 would require up to €2.3 billion in financial assistance from international lenders. He told the Commission that if Lithuania had to rely on its own resources to meet the cost of closing the plant, it would not be able to afford to shut the unit down before 2015 at the earliest.

The minister said after the meeting that he expected that Ignalina would be taken out of service at some point between the two dates.

EU sources report that the two sides discussed possible ways of funding the closure plans, including loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB), money from the EU's enlargement assistance programme and aid from individual member states.

Nuclear experts have, however, warned that it will be difficult for Lithuania to get the necessary cash to shut down the plant because the Union is targeting enlargement spending on infrastructure projects such as transport links rather than on ending countries' reliance on nuclear power for their energy needs. Ignalina supplies

70-80% of the country's energy and could become a valuable source of foreign currency if Vilnius went ahead with plans to sell electricity abroad.

Lithuanian officials point out that the government is exploring alternative options for generating power put forward by Scandinavian gas companies, but these would require at least a 30% contribution from public lenders towards the cost.

Sources say the country's parliament will have to make a decision on the plant's future before September this year, with the debate on the issue expected to get under way this month.

The September deadline is crucial as the Commission is due to produce an updated report on how far Lithuania has progressed in its preparations for joining the Union by then.

Vilnius is aware that it needs to secure a recommendation from the Commission to start negotiations with EU governments by the end of this year if it is not to fall hopelessly behind in the race for Union membership.