Lithuania picked Hitachi Ltd. (6501) over Westinghouse Electric Corp. to build a new nuclear power plant in the nation amid European concerns over the safety of atomic energy.
The government plans to sign an agreement with Hitachi this year and to complete construction by the end of 2020, Deputy Energy Minister Romas Svedas said at a news conference in Vilnius yesterday. He declined to disclose the preliminary costs of the investment.
Lithuania closed its last nuclear reactor, the Soviet-era Ignalina plant, in 2009 to comply with European Union rules. Shutting the reactor, which had been generating 70 percent of the nation's electricity, forced Lithuania to became a net importer of power and caused electricity prices to rise, according to the World Nuclear Association.
"We picked the most economically attractive proposal," Svedas said.
A March 11 earthquake and tsunami at Japan's Fukushima plant caused the world's worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, prompting other European nations to reevaluate or reject atomic power.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered in May the closure of all of the nation's nuclear plants by 2022. Italians voted in June against building new reactors. The European Union has called for safety tests to evaluate whether reactors can withstand natural as well as man-made disasters at its 143 nuclear power plants.
Russian Dependence
Other nations, like Lithuania, continue to support nuclear energy, viewing it as a way to cut carbon-dioxide emissions and reduce dependence on Russian natural gas and oil. The Czech Republic is going ahead with its project to build two new reactors at the Temelin power plant near the Austrian border.
Lithuania Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said last month the country's nuclear project will help the region establish energy independence.
Hitachi, which was selected as the "strategic investor," is joined in the project by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a U.S.- based venture with General Electric Co. (GE) The GE-Hitachi venture will provide support, equipment, supply-chain consulting and fuel, said Michael Tetuan, a spokesman for the unit.
The advanced boiling-water reactor would be capable of generating 1,300 megawatts at the site in Visaginas, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of the capital.
The Lithuanian government has said in the past that the strategic investor could be offered as much as a 51 percent stake in the new plant. Any agreement would require parliament's approval. Lithuania, which is building the facility along with neighbors Latvia, Estonia and Poland, is continuing talks on the size of each stake with all parties in the project, Svedas said.
Hitachi and Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba Corp. (6502), bid for the project after after Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEP) withdrew its proposal.
