"If experts said that the price was comfortable for consumers and that this nuclear plant would work profitably, we would agree to such decision," Butkevičius told a news conference in Tallinn on Thursday.
The Lithuanian prime minister said he made a pledge to his Estonian counterpart, Andrus Ansip, that the final decision would be made after a task force finished work. Butkevičius recalled that the government had been authorized by parliament to submit draft legal acts by mid-May.
After winning the general elections last October, the Butkevičius-led Social Democratic Party has criticized the previous center-right government's project for building a new 1,350-megawatt nuclear power plant by 2020 to 2022 together with Baltic energy companies and Japan's Hitachi. Nevertheless, the previous government of Andrius Kubilius then said that the final investment decisions would not be made until 2015.
A few days after the parliamentary elections in the end of October, Butkevičius said in an interview to BNS: "The issue will have to be addressed much later, but today we're saying that the project should not be implemented in Lithuania."
The majority of Lithuanian voters did not back the project in a non-binding referendum that was held in tandem with general elections on October 14. Some 34.09 percent of those who cast ballots said "yes" to building a nuclear power plant and 62.68 percent said "no". The voter turnout was 52.58 percent.
