Lithuania braced for the E.U.-ordered shutdown of a key nuclear plant on Thursday, a move set to push up electricity prices in a deep economic crisis and leave it counting on former master Moscow for power.
Lithuania
braced for the E.U.-ordered shutdown of a key nuclear plant on Thursday, a move
set to push up electricity prices in a deep economic crisis and leave it
counting on former master
Moscow
for
power.
At
11:00 p.m.
local
time (2100 GMT), the last reactor was due to go offline at the 26-year-old
Soviet-era plant near the eastern town of
Visaginas
,
which provides 70% of the Baltic state's electricity.
It is similar to the one that exploded at
Chernobyl
in
then-Soviet
Ukraine
in
1986, the world's worst nuclear accident.
Lithuania
,
which won independence from the Soviet bloc in 1991, agreed to shut the plant
by 2010 in order to win admission to the E.U. in May 2004. One of the two
reactors was closed in December 2004.
Vilnius
subsequently tried and failed
to convince
Brussels
to
allow it to keep the plant running until a replacement was ready - something
not expected until 2018-2020.
The country of 3.3 million people is now facing a surge in power prices from
January 1: 30% for households and 20% for companies.
That is bad news amid one of the world's deepest economic crises.
Lithuania
earned a reputation as an economic "tiger" after joining the E.U.,
with rising wages, easy credit and money sent home by emigrants fueling a boom.
But it was hit hard as the global crisis battered key export markets elsewhere
in the EU, plus
Russia
.
Its economy has shrunk by 15.2% this year, the government estimates, and the
nuclear shutdown could dent its performance in 2010, shaving up to one
percentage point off gross domestic product, experts warn.
Violeta Klyviene, an analyst at Danske Bank in
Vilnius
, said
individuals and businesses would "feel the aftershock" of the
shutdown. She said the economy could shrink by 4.5% in 2010.
The nuclear plant's director Viktor Sevaldin came from
Russia
to
work there on the eve of its opening in 1983 and has stayed ever since.
"For years, nuclear power here was something normal and invisible. In the
coming months, we're going to realise what we've lost," he said.
While closing a plant that generates the bulk of a country's power may seem to
raise the spectre of a massive electricity shortfall,
Vilnius
has
long had plans to plug the gap.
"I can offer assurances that after the shutdown,
Lithuania
won't
lack electricity," said Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, who was elected
in October 2008 and opposed last-ditch attempts to extend the plant's life.
Lithuania
has
turned to mothballed gas and oil-fired power stations. But the former will have
to rely on supplies from
Russia
,
whose relations with
Lithuania
are
rocky.
"The Lithuanian energy system was and is dependent on
Russia
, because
our energy sources, our supply of gas and power, are tied to that
country," President Dalia Grybauskaite told the Baltic News Service.
Moscow
's critics often accuse it of using energy as a
political tool - although Grybauskaite, in power since July, has adopted a
softer line than her predecessors.
Russia
has
cut off oil to
Lithuania
in
the past, blaming repairs to a key pipeline - but critics noted it was after
Vilnius
sold
Lithuania
's
only refinery to a Polish, rather than Russian, buyer.
In another Soviet legacy,
Lithuania
is
connected to
Russia
's
power grid but not to those of fellow members of the 27-nation E.U.
It has signed a power deal with fellow Baltic state
Estonia
, and,
beyond the E.U., with
Ukraine
-
whose electricity goes via
Russia
.
Lithuania
plans
hook-ups with the Polish and Swedish power grids, also enabling electricity
imports from elsewhere in the E.U.
On December 8, it also launched the tender for a new nuclear plant, a project
involving
Poland
,
Latvia
and
Estonia
and
expected to be ready by 2018-2020.
Construction is forecast to cost EUR3 to EUR5 billion ($4.3 to $7.2 billion).
Decommissioning the existing plant is expected to take 25 years and cost around
EUR1 billion.
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