Ekaterna Royaka, Senior Analyst of DnB Nord:

 — Lithuania has many reasons to postpone the construction date

On August 12, the Government of Lithuania introduced amendments in the plan of the national energy strategy implementation. The amendments consisted in postponing of the commissioning date of the new nuclear power plant, which was planned to be constructed instead of shutdown Ignalinsk NPP.

Ekaterna Royaka, Senior Analyst of DnB Nord:

This issue is widely discussed not only in Lithuania, but in other countries, which are interested in the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania. The discussion is very sensitive because after Ignalinsk NPP shutdown there was not any shortage of electrical energy in Lithuania. The new market works efficiently and it is capable to provide quite nice prices on the one hand and sufficient amount of electrical power on the other.

There are many reasons to postpone the NPP construction date. There are plenty of them for such a decision. The situation with the closest markets is very uncertain: Kaliningrad started NPP construction, Poland is also planning to construct a plant and further NPPs construction is also possible in some other countries. As a result, there will be quite a big amount of nuclear pants for one region.

Today, when constructing an NPP, people take in consideration the post-crisis period and certain budgetary holes, which were formed during the couple of years. Since there may be more active large units, there is a possibility that the idea of a nuclear power plant in Lithuania by 2020 may become so physiologically obsolete and noncompetitive, that I consider the decision to postpone the construction terms to be a quite logical one.

The possibility of a new NPP construction in Lithuania depends on the actions of its competitors – the closest countries. To the extent that the possible size of the nuclear power plant has not been agreed on and the desires of the three Baltic countries and Poland (which wanted to participate in this project) have not been satisfied, today there are more questions than the answers and that is why, from this point of view, the decision to prolong these plans for some period of time is quite logical.

Today there may be discussed plans for cooperation with Kaliningrad region or Belarus on participation in the NPP construction on their territories. But again, the question turns rather to political aspects and this energy independence is often put on the one scale while economic reasons are put on the other scale.

For Lithuania the variety of opportunities for electricity handling in terms of a long-term energy supply shall be in the highest consideration, irrespective of whether it will be the energy generated by its own nuclear power plants or energy supplied by other countries in accordance with the agreement.

In my opinion the agreement on a joint construction of a nuclear power plant would be more profitable. But it shall be proved by very exact calculations.