Ignalina posts 2001 loss

Officials from the Lithuanian nuclear power plant Ignalina said May 6 that the plant suffered an audited net loss of 94 million litas ($24.6 million) in 2001, an increase of 69 percent from the previous year.

"The largest amount of losses, 63 million litas, consists of money we did not receive for energy sold in 1999 to the state-owned company Lietuvos Energija," the plant's finance director, Eugenijus Grumkas, told AFP.

Ignalina's managers hope the state will eventually allow it to apply the loss against its tax bill.

The turnover of the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear power plant, which operates two Chernobyl-type reactors, grew by 14 percent last year to 580.75 million litas.

Electricity production climbed by 34.9 percent to 11.3 billion kilowatt hours.

In the first quarter of 2002 Ignalina produced 3.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and earned a pretax profit 48.8 million litas.

As part of its preparations to join the European Union, Lithua-nia has already promised to shut down the first of the plant's two reactor units by 2005 but has not yet made a decision on its complete closure.

The EU wants the second unit shut down by 2009 and has warned Lithuania it will not close membership negotiations this year unless a closure date has been set.

The EU considers the design of Ignalina's RBMK reactors unsafe despite some 250 million euros ($221.24 million) having been spent improving their safety over the past decade.

Ignalina produces about 70 percent of Lithuania's energy.