Translated material
Electroshock
Lithuania's nuclear project has lost an investor
In the near future, Belarus may join negotiations between Russia and Lithuania on the resumption of oil supplies through the Druzhba oil pipeline. A corresponding request was recently voiced by a high-ranking representative of the Lithuanian government, Deividas Matulionis. “We still dared to ask the Belarusians to take on the role of mediator in Russia on the issue of opening the Druzhba oil pipeline. They were enthusiastic about the idea and said they were inclined to mediate,” he said.The intensification of Vilnius' attempts to speed up the resumption of Russian oil supplies to the Lithuanian oil refinery in Mazeikiai, which were stopped in 2006 for technical reasons, is associated with the major failure of Lithuania's plans to revive nuclear energy. The other day it became known that at the last moment the only contender in the competition for a strategic investor for the implementation of a nuclear power plant construction project, the South Korean energy corporation Corea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), withdrew its application.
The competition was announced a year ago. His goal was to find a company capable of taking a concession on a construction site with the condition of constructing a nuclear power plant on it by 2020. The winner had to ensure the supply of reactors and equipment, organize construction and technological control, and independently find sources of financing. Despite the cheerful assurances of the Lithuanian Ministry of Energy that there would be plenty of applicants, only two were found - and the French concern Electricité de France withdrew from the race ten days before the end of the competition.
The Koreans' refusal took Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius by surprise: this became known the day before his meeting in Warsaw with colleagues from Latvia, Estonia and Poland - partners in the nuclear project. The Prime Minister even wrote a letter to his South Korean colleague asking him to persuade KEPCO to change its decision. Following this, rumors began to circulate that the partnership between the Baltic states and the Poles could come to an end. However, the negotiations in Warsaw were followed by a message from the Lithuanian government that the prime ministers of the four countries confirmed their readiness to continue cooperation. Lithuanian Energy Minister Arvydas Syakmokas said that this agreement will help find investors for the nuclear power plant, moving it from the category of a Lithuanian project to a truly international one. Other details of the four-way meeting remained unknown.
However, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite expressed doubts about the success of the Warsaw negotiations. According to her, the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania should not be written off yet, but it must be recognized that the current situation in the world is not favorable to the project. The President proposed paying more attention to other points of Lithuania's energy policy - connecting to European power grids and searching for alternative sources. But in parliament, even deputies from the ruling coalition camp demanded that Energy Minister Syakmokas be held accountable. The opposition led the way towards his resignation, blaming the minister for the failure of the competition to find an investor for the construction of a new nuclear power plant and the unreasonable project for dismantling the old Ignalina station.
On the same days, a conference was held in Vilnius to discuss the possibilities of building nuclear power plants in Lithuania and Belarus. The director of the Lithuanian Institute of Energy, Jurgis Vilemas, who spoke at the meeting, said that Lithuania is unlikely to be able to find an investor. The scientist, based on many calculations and arguments, argued that Lithuania has neither the need nor the opportunity to have a new nuclear power plant. He emphasized that if existing power plants are modernized, the total capacity will be abundantly sufficient until 2015. And there Lithuania could resolve the issue of prices for imported energy resources by entering the European energy market.
Jurgis Vilemas debunked the myth about the cheapness of nuclear energy by summing up all the likely costs of a nuclear power plant in Lithuania. The scientist warned that in the eyes of investors, this project carries a high risk associated with technological, and especially economic security, taking into account the competition between Russian (in the Kaliningrad region) and Belarusian projects. “The construction of nuclear power plants is a business for large and rich countries,” he concluded, and this opinion was shared by the majority of forum participants. Greenpeace expert Jaan Haverkamp, when asked by Vremya Novostey whether such arguments could change the positions of Lithuania’s Polish and Baltic partners, said that “they are maturing, although it is always difficult to leave cooperation.”
Let us recall that at the end of 2009, at the request of the European Union, Lithuania closed the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which provided electricity in quantities significantly exceeding domestic needs. Long before this, the idea of building a new nuclear power plant began to mature in Vilnius. In 2006, first Estonia and Latvia announced their interest, then Poland. However, apart from the memorandum, this cooperation has not yet been secured by any other agreements and is supported only declaratively during high-level political contacts. There is still no idea how powerful the station will be and what shares in the project will belong to each of the four countries.