Metinė prenumerata tik 6,99 Eur. Juodai geras pasiūlymas
Išbandyti
2012 11 07

EU lawmakers propose to stop funding for Lithuania's nuclear plant closure

A European Parliament delegation that visited Lithuania last summer proposes to suspend European funding for the closure of Lithuania's Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant if a conflict between Nukem Technologies, the general contractor, and the plant's administration is not resolved.
Ignalinos atominė elektrinė
Ignalina nuclear power plant / Agnės Radzevičiūtės nuotr.

The MEPs also propose in their conclusions to discontinue EU funding for the project after 2017, LRT Television's news program Panorama reports.

"As far as I know, there are no signs of disagreements between Ignalina plant's administration and the contractors being solved. If not, then we say that we are going to stop funding. The new EU budget may set aside money to continue this project, but it will not be paid until the conflict between Nukem and Lithuania is resolved," Petri Sarvamaa, a member of the European Parliament, said.

The Ignalina plant's administration and the Russian-owned German company Nukem Technologies are in disagreement over nuclear fuel storage casks, which the Lithuanian government says do not comply with technical and nuclear safety requirements. Nukem Technologies has promised to provide certificates proving that the casks are safe by the middle of this month, but with less than a week left, it is not clear yet if it will hand the documents.

"We want to draw attention to problems related to nuclear safety, issues on which we are not going to compromise. The proposal to stop funding seems like pressure to seek a compromise at any cost. But it would be at the expense of nuclear safety," said Arūnas Vinčiūnas, Lithuania's ambassador to the European Union.

The European Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control is unhappy that Ignalina plant's decommissioning projects are running several years behind schedule, because every extra day costs a lot of money. The European Commission says that Lithuania will have to cover the additional costs.

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