Lithuania vows to counteract construction of N-plants near its borders

Lithuania will use its term of rotating presidency in the EU to counteract the construction of the Belarusian and Baltic nuclear plants that are to be located “in the immediate vicinity of the EU frontiers”, the Baltic nation’s Foreign Minister, Antanas Linkevicius hinted Wednesday. He made his country’s endeavors clear while presenting the priorities of Lithuanian presidency in the EU, which began July 1 and will end December 31. The problem of construction of nuclear plants, the security of which remains unwarranted, close to the borders of the EU requires a consolidated position on the part of all the member-states of the EU and Lithuania has a specific experience in that sphere considering the fact that such plants are being built in its neighborhood, Linkevicius said. In 2011, Lithuania failed a bidding contest for the construction of a nuclear plant on its own territory, as not a single company in the world showed interest in the project. The Lithuanians charged Russia with putting pressure on investors then. They said the Russian nuclear authorities were pressing forward with a project of the Baltic nuclear plant in the Kaliningrad region, which would turn that exclave Baltic territory into an exporter of electricity. As for the nuclear plant currently under construction in Belarus’s western Grodno region, the Lithuanians believe it will create the risk of an oversupply of electricity in the region and will bring about a shortage of demand for it. The situation in the power engineering sector in the three former Soviet Baltic republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - is further aggravated by the fact that they have failed to synchronize their power grids with the European grids via Poland over the ten years since they received full membership of the EU. As a reminder of the Soviet-era past, their grids remain synchronized with the energy systems of Russia and Belarus.