Lithuania says EU must fund n-plant closure
Date: 17-May-02
Country: LITHUANIA
Author: Bryan Bradley
Lithuania hopes to reach an agreement with the EU by July on the Ignalina nuclear power plant, which was built by the Soviets in the 1980s and shares the same design as Ukraine's disastrous Chernobyl plant.
"(The EU) should cover all the costs, from various sources, putting that into both its budget until 2006 and its budget after 2006. This is a European problem, not Lithuania's problem," Brazauskas told Reuters in an interview.
Funding the enormous costs of shutting down Ignalina, which produces 70 percent of the Baltic state's electricity, is the main obstacle to closure and is the subject of on-going talks with Brussels.
The EU considers Ignalina's two reactors unsafe because of their Chernobyl-like design and demands a commitment for full closure by 2009 as a condition for Lithuania to end accession talks this year in order to join in 2004.
The Baltic state has already agreed to close the first reactor by 2005. The second reactor was originally designed to run out in 2017 but parliament earlier this week said a 2009-2015 timeframe for closure was technically possible.
Brazauskas made clear this was not a retreat from its demand that Brussels pay the costs.
"In any case (the second reactor) must be closed between 2009 and 2015. Maybe the EU is open to discuss one year or another," Brazauskas said.
"But that doesn't change the principle. In some form it has to be said: how much from one EU fund or another, how much direct financing, how much from Lithuania."
He said part of the financing might be "commercial" and noted Lithuania has its own decommissioning fund, with some 160 million litas (46 million euros) collected since 1992.
But this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 2.4 billion euro the government recently estimated full closure will cost.
"So we don't say 'all' categorically, but all the costs must be covered," he said.
HARSH WORDS FOR VILNIUS
Last month the European Union's top energy official turned her fire on Lithuania, accusing it of unfairly demanding the EU pay the vast sums needed to decommission Ignalina.
"The Lithuanian prime minister said Lithuania was not going to spend anything on decommissioning Ignalina I or II... It was going to cost 4.0 billion euros ($3.56 billion) and either we stumped up or tough luck," European Commissioner in charge of energy policy Loyola de Palacio said.
"If this is the kind of thing they say before they are in the EU, what will they say after they are in?" she added.
De Palacio said at the time she wanted a mandatory safety standard for the whole EU to be applied just as strictly to the countries, mainly from eastern Europe, which want to join the EU.
The European Commission has so far proposed annual funding of 70 million euros from 2004-2006 for Ignalina's closure, and committed 40 million euros to an international fund which offers a total 203 million euros for closure efforts through 2005.
