Baltic States – CIS, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Lithuania

"A lack of international community's attention gives way to constructing unsafe nuclear power plants (NPP) at the EU borders. Therefore, the EU must find a recipe how to encourage neighboring countries to cooperate more closely when it comes to nuclear safety issues. One of such measures could be considering a restriction on importing electricity energy from third countries if neighboring countries fail to comply with international nuclear safety standards," she said.

"Nuclear safety standards cannot be exclusively American, European, Japanese or Russia. They are universal," Degutiene stressed. The Lithuanian parliament speaker also named several reasons why the projected NPPs in the Kaliningrad region and Belarus could threaten the safety of the entire region.

"Neither Russia nor Belarus have submitted environmental impact assessments what concerns their future plants. The currently ongoing correspondence of Lithuania and the two countries on the environmental impact assessment can be viewed as a waste of time as we are not receiving any answers (&) both plants will be built by the state-owned Russian company Rosatom, reported ELTA/LETA.

The Russian company plans to use a new type of reactor which so far has not been put into practice," Degutiene said. "I am also worried about the reports that Russia will be responsible for the safety at the Belarusian NPP. Russia's Rosatom speaks about only a 2 year warranty for the Belarusian NPP, as it was some kind of a refrigerator or a TV set," she said.