Lithuania shuts Soviet-era nuclear reactor
Tadas Blinda
Officials at Lithuania's Soviet-era nuclear plant say they have shut
down the facility's last reactor.
A spokeswoman said the Chernobyl-type reactor at the Ignalina plant
closed on schedule at 11 p.m. local time Thursday.
Lithuania agreed to close the plant as part of a deal to joining the
European Union in 2004.
The plant was built in the 1980 and is considered by many to be unsafe
since it shares design flaws with the Chernobyl unit that exploded in
1986. The Ignalina plant's first reactor closed in December of that
year.
The shutdown has been greeted with anguish across Lithuania, as the
country will lose a source of cheap electricity and will be forced to
import more expensive energy.
Its last working reactor — ordered closed by the EU because it is
considered too similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986 —
boasted a capacity of 1,320 megawatts, making it one of the largest
nuclear reactors in the world.
Lithuania — one of the two most nuclear-energy dependent nations along
with France — had been hoping that the EU would allow it to keep the
plant open for another two to three years, but Brussels, which
demanded the reactor's shutdown as part of Lithuania's membership
agreement, flatly refused.
"We are keeping our word to our European partners," Energy Minister
Arvydas Sekmokas said during a visit to the plant on New Year's Eve.
In April 1986, an earlier, smaller version of the RBMK reactor at
Ignalina exploded in Chernobyl, Ukraine, casting a fallout cloud over
a wide swathe of Europe. It remains the world's worst civilian nuclear
catastrophe.
According to the shutdown plan, output at the Ignalina unit will be
reduced from 1,320 megawatts to 700 beginning at 8 p.m. local time
(1800 GMT; 1 p.m. EDT) and switched off completely at 11 p.m (2100
GMT; 4 p.m. EDT).
"We will witness an unprecedented event today as Lithuania becomes the
first country in the world to abandon nuclear energy completely," said
the plant's chief. "Only Armenia knows what it means to lose this
power — it had to shut down its reactor after an earthquake but
reopened it after six years."
Residents in Visaginas, a town of 25,000, are frustrated that
Lithuania will lose the cheap energy source.
"I don't understand it. Why throw away a good thing that could still
serve for years?" said a 47-year-old engineer at the plant. "This is
my last day at work. There is no job in Visaginas for people like me,"
he said.
The Ignalina plant supplied over 70 percent of Lithuania's electricity
needs — only France receives more of its kilowatt needs from nuclear
power.
The Baltic nation of 3.4 million people will cover the shortfall by
buying power on the open market from Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine and
Russia.
By 2013, Lithuania hopes to build a new natural-gas power plant, but
that would not be enough to meet its own energy needs.
Many Lithuanians are worried that they will become dependent on
Russian gas supplies, which they fear may stop without warning given
Russia's snap decisions in the past to shut off supplies to Ukraine.
However, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius does not share the view.
"Lithuania could have done its homework better preparing for the
closure, but it won't be left without energy next year. I believe our
country, together with its Baltic neighbors, will have an energy
market similar to the Nordic countries and other EU regions," he told
Lithuanian Radio.
Vidas
December 31st ?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
wake me when you have something interesting to say Gintuks.
Vidas