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WARSAW: The electricity companies of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania set up a working group Tuesday with their Polish counterpart to look into including Poland in a project to build a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania, officials said here.
The heads of the four energy companies held day-long talks in Warsaw over a plan to replace the ageing power facility in Ignalina, eastern Lithuania.
The talks were held amid a new energy row that has affected the European Union, after Russia cut off the flow of oil to the EU through Belarus, with which Moscow is locked in a bitter dispute over transit fees.
The cut-off, which came a year after Russia closed the spigots that carry gas through Ukraine to the EU, has again highlighted the need for all nations to diversify their sources of energy.
After the talks in Warsaw, Sandor Liive, chairman of the board of Eesti Energia, said Estonia had dropped most of the reservations it had expressed last month about bringing Poland on board the nuclear construction project.
“After today's meeting we have better knowledge of the Polish energy company and a clearer perception of the added value that Poland's participation would bring to the project,” Liive said in a statement.
“Definitely, there are advantages in Polish participation in an already started nuclear project,” he added.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania last year gave the green light to a project to build a new nuclear power station to replace the Ignalina facility, which uses reactors similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986, provoking the world's worst nuclear disaster.
Lithuania promised the European Union, which the three Baltic states and Poland joined in 2004, to shut down Ignalina by 2009.
In December, Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas announced that Poland would join the project, but the leaders of Estonia and Latvia expressed reticence about bringing a fourth party on board.
On Tuesday, the head of Lithuania's energy company reiterated Vilnius's eagerness to include the Poles.
“We see Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne as a strong partner and are interested that this company should join the project,” Rymantas Juozaitis, head of Lietuvos Energija, said.
A feasibility study conducted last year by the Baltic energy companies predicted the new nuclear facility would not come onstream before 2015, leaving a six-year gap between the closure of Ignalina and the inauguration of the new plant.
During that time, the Baltic states, and especially Lithuania, which derives 80 percent of its electricity needs from Ignalina, will have to seek energy sources elsewhere.
The feasibility study also showed that a new single-reactor plant with a capacity of 800 Megawatts, or a two-reactor, 1,600-Mw facility would require an investment of 2.5 billion to four billion euros.
Jacek Socha, head of Polish electricity group PSE said after Tuesday's meeting, that the total investment by all four parties could run up to five billion euros (6.5 billion dollars), and said the new plant's capacity could be as much as 3,200 Megawatts.
The new nuclear facility would be just one step towards reducing the Baltic states' reliance on Russia for their energy resources.
The three countries, which were Soviet republics from the close of World War II until 1991, still rely heavily on Russia for supplies of natural gas and oil, and their power grids remain linked to that of their former ruler.
