VILNIUS - Management of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant has said that the time has come to make arrangements for closing the plant in late 2009, while the government's emergency negotiator with the European Union stressed again that Lithuania needed the reactor to continue operating in 2010 and beyond.
INPP CEO Viktor Shevaldin met with Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas on March 31 to discuss the reactor's immediate operational needs. Shevaldin told the head of government that the plant's staff was proceeding on the assumption that they would have to shut down the plant on Dec. 31, 2009.
"We are making arrangements for the shutdown. We guarantee that the second unit is capable of operating until the end of 2009," he told journalists after the meeting.
He did, however, add that Ignalina's one reactor was capable of working beyond Dec. 31, 2009.
"Operations after 2009 are largely a political question, not a technical one," he said.
Shevaldin reiterated that the company needed to know soon whether it would continue working after 2009. He said the plant had ordered nuclear fuel for 2009, and that if it were to continue operations, fuel for 2010 should be ordered early in 2008 at the latest.
He said if the plant was to continue working a report specifying the timeframe was need by November.
Shevaldin did not hide his sympathies, and hinted that the atomic plant, which has a Chernobyl-type reactor, could remain operational. "The design lifespan of the reactor makes up 30 years. The second unit has already worked for 20 years," he said.
Before joining the EU, Lithuania obliged to shut down both the plant's reactors. The first reactor was shut in 2004. Faced with the predicament of a complete energy deficit, Vilnius is full panic mode, and officials are now working to extend the life of Ignalina and arrange construction of a new facility.
Aleksandras Abisala, the government's negotiator for talks EU, stressed that Lithuania would face an acute energy deficit post-Ignalina and that the best option to avert a crisis was to keep the reactor operational 's something Brussels doesn't want to hear about.
"It is absolutely clear now that we will have problems with generation capacity after 2009, with reliable and stable electricity supplies. So now we see only one good way out 's for the reactor to continue operations," Abisala told journalists March 31.
As he explained, the task was to get the European Commission to understand Lithuania's problem and propose good solutions.
He added, "If that good solution is better than the continuation of the plant's operations, it would make us all happy."
After receiving the appointment last month, Abisala, a former prime minister, admitted that odds of convincing Brussels were slim. This time, however, he came up with a slightly more apt analogy, saying the chances of winning a postponement of the reactor were akin to Zalgiris beating the Boston Celtics.
"If Zalgiris had to play the Boston Celtics and we gave them a 5 percent chance, would you support Zalgiris? I think so. We are in the same position," he said.
He stressed that it was important that the commission that he heads does everything it can. "The problem is that we're not able to do everything on time and we don't have money for everything, and that's why we need the [European] commission's help," he said.
Abisala said that the final decision should be made this year.
