Poland may join Ignalina replacement project
Lithuania and her immediate neighbors – Latvia and Estonia – are in the market for a new nuclear nuclear power station. These Baltic states are trying to replace the electricity supply that is scheduled to be removed from the grid when Unit 2 of the Ignalina nuclear power station shuts down because of an agreement made when Lithuania joined the European Union.
That shutdown is supposed to happen in 2009, though I have not yet given up hope that sanity will rein, even in the EU, and the plant will be allowed to remain in operation until a replacement power plant is completed.
The new development in the saga is that Poland has decided that it might join its Baltic Sea neighbors in the project. According to a 1 February 2007 article in World Nuclear News titled Poland to join new Ignalina project “as soon as possible”
“Poland hopes that, in cooperation with the Lithuanian government, this deal will be finalised and signed as soon as possible. We are very interested in this project,” said Anna Fotyga, Poland’s foreign minister. Reportedly, a deal could be signed in December.
Jonas Gilinas of Kaunas University of Technology said last year: “The construction of a new power plant on the Ignalina site, as well as the integration of electricity and gas networks into the European energy system is the most attractive way of solving problems of secure supply, energy independence and reduction of contamination of the environment.”
