Energy, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Lithuania, Nuclear power plant

Lithuania's deputy energy minister says that negotiations with the European Commission on further funding for the INPP decommissioning will begin in 2017 or 2018.

"Based on preliminary estimates, we may need around 900 million euros. The negotiations have not yet started," Audrius Kamienas, director of the Activity Planning and Finance Department at the INPP, told members of the parliament this week.

"We expect that after 2020 all Lithuanian institutions will make efforts to continue and secure financing from the EU and donors so that we can proceed with the decommissioning," he added.

According to him, lobbyist efforts are already underway to secure support from donors. Meetings with the ambassadors of Sweden, France, Germany and Spain are being held.

Deputy Energy Minister Rokas Baliukovas said that active negotiations on additional EU funding for the Ignalina plant closure would start in 2017 to 2018.

Kamienas said that 941 million euros had been used for the INPP closure by the start of 2016, with another 745 million euros in EU and national budget funds planned to be used by 2020.

The Ignalina plant, which was the first in the world to close Soviet-built RBMK-type reactors that are considered unsafe by the West, is to be fully decommissioned by 2038. Started in 2004, the closure process is estimated to cost 2.593 billion euros in total.

In line with its EU accession commitments, Lithuania shut down the first unit of the Ignalina plant on the last day of 2004 and closed the second and last operating unit five years later.

The INPP decommissioning projects are being carried out by a consortium of the Russian-owned German company Nukem and Germany's spent fuel cask manufacturer GNS.