Reactor shutdown opens door to Russia plans

> VISAGINAS, Lithuania (The Associated Press) - Dec 22 - By GARY PEACH
> Associated Press Writer
>
> To the European Union, the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear plant set
> amid
> Lithuania's lakes and oak forests remains a gigantic safety hazard -
> too
> similar to the reactor that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986.
>
> To Lithuanians, however, the twin concrete reactor blocks have been
> a symbol
> of energy independence since the small Baltic country regained its
> freedom
> after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
>
> That is why the EU-ordered shutdown of the plant's last working
> reactor on
> New Year's Eve is making Lithuanians uneasy, since they now face the
> prospect of importing energy - from Russia.
>
> Lithuania will lose 40 percent of its generating capacity on Jan. 1,
> a gap
> that has set off a race to build new, safer nuclear plants in the
> region, a
> race Moscow is trying mightily to win.
>
> On top of that, Lithuanians will pay more for electricity at a time
> when
> their economy is in a deep recession.
>
> "We'll have to pay two or three times more for energy, and our
> competitiveness in European markets will be damaged," said Bronislovas
> Lubys, CEO of the Achema Group, a chemical consortium. The country's
> central
> bank says the loss of the plant will cost the economy an additional 1
> percent a year.
>
> In the eastern town of Visaginas, where the Ignalia plant is
> located, the
> mood is grim. Some 80 percent of of the town's residents are Russian
> speakers who moved there in the 1980s to build the hulking twin
> concrete
> reactor blocks.
>
> "Lithuania's economy and energy industry are not prepared to live
> without a
> nuclear power plant," plant chief Viktor Shevaldin told The Associated
> Press. "Prices for consumers will increase starting in 2010, and
> this will
> undoubtedly affect the population's standard of living, industry and
> the
> economy as a whole."
>
> Even more unnerving is the prospect of relying on Russia, viewed
> across
> Eastern Europe with suspicion because of the Soviet past and
> considered an
> unreliable energy partner after its state-owned gas company shut off
> supplies through Ukraine last year and in 2006 over price disputes.
> The
> experience has led the EU to seek more energy independence from
> Russia,
> though it refused Lithuanian efforts to revisit the Ignalina shutdown.
>
> The EU wanted the 1980s plant shut down as a condition of EU
> membership
> because the two RBMK-1500 model reactors are too similar to the
> RBMK-1000
> version that exploded at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, casting a
> radioactive
> cloud over Europe. Ignalina's first reactor was shut down in 2004,
> while the
> second will be disconnected from the power grid an hour before
> midnight Dec.
> 31.
>
> Come Jan. 1, the country will cover the shortfall by buying
> kilowatts on the
> open market - from Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. By 2013 it
> hopes to
> build a new natural-gas power plant, but that would fall short of
> meeting
> its own energy needs.
>
> Russia is ready to fill the gap, and is gearing up to build a two-
> reactor
> nuclear plant just 10 miles from the Lithuanian border in Russia's
> exclave
> of Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania.
>
> The planned $5 billion Baltic Nuclear Power Plant, to be built near
> town of
> Sovetsk, would be overkill for Kaliningrad, a region of 1 million
> people
> whose future energy are already taken care of by a planned a planned
> gas-fired power plant to be built by 2012.
>
> "We'll export all the output from the nuclear power plant ... we've
> never
> concealed that fact," Kaliningrad's regional governor, Georgy Boos,
> told The
> Associated Press in his office in the exclave. "By 2016, when we
> launch the
> first reactor, there will be a huge energy shortage" throughout the
> Baltic
> Sea region, he said.
>
> To assuage European fears about reliance on Russian kilowatts,
> Russia is
> offering foreign investors a minority stake in the new plant.
>
> The problem is, Lithuania is essentially courting the same pool of
> investors
> for its own planned new plant in Visaginas. If Russian plant is
> already
> established, Lithuania will be hard pressed for a market for its own
> future
> plant.
>
> Because Lithuania still functions on the old Soviet power grid, it is
> isolated from Europe's - though the EU is working over the long term
> on
> building new connections to change that.
>
> Lithuania is pinning its hopes on two possible alternatives: a euro600
> million underwater power cable with Sweden, and a euro1.1 billion grid
> connection beween Alytas, Lithuania and Elk in northern Poland.
>
> But the link with Sweden will require eight years, and the one with
> Poland a
> decade, according to a new EU study. This is why Ignalina plant boss
> Shevaldin thinks Lithuania's chances of finding investors "aren't very
> good."
>
> "Russia has the advantage since it already knows what kind of
> reactor it
> will build. In this sense they'll build their station quicker than
> Lithuania," Shevaldin, a native Russian who moved to Lithuania in
> the 1980s.
>
> Belarus is also eager to join the competition and have Russia's
> Rosatom
> build its first nuclear plant, which would go up not far across the
> border
> from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Russia has expressed
> willingness not
> only to build the plant but also to help with finance.
>
> Still, the Russian plans face obstacles. There are no grid connections
> between Poland and Kaliningrad, and those that exist between
> Kaliningrad and
> Lithuania will need to be upgraded. Given their distrust of Russia,
> the
> Poles and Lithuanians might not cooperate.
>
> With the three nuclear plants planned in the same region, things
> could get
> crowded.
>
> "The construction of a nuclear power plant is very expensive - the
> economic
> costs of waste disposal and environmental risks are huge," said energy
> specialist Claudia Kemfert at the German Institute for Economic
> Research in
> Berlin. "So I do not believe that all the planned projects will be
> realised
> because of economic costs. I could imagine that one of the three
> will be."
>
> The Russians have fast-tracked the Kaliningrad project, squeezing
> 4-7 years
> of environmental impact studies and licensing into less than two
> years.
>
> Public opinion in Kaliningrad is against the project, says Alexandra
> Koroleyva, who heads the region's branch of Eco-Defense, an
> environmental
> group opposed to nuclear energy. "There's a lot of people who moved
> here
> from Chernobyl, so you'll rarely meet someone on the street who'll
> say they
> want an atomic power plant," said Alexandra Koroleva.
>
> "I hope I'm not around when it begins operating," said resident Ivan
> Trutnev, 72. "I know they've got this advanced technology nowadays,
> but if
> one thing goes wrong, it'll all be over."