Vilnius. File photoMOSCOW, Aug 16Lithuanian Minister of Energy Dainius Kreivis called the decision to stop the construction of the Visaginas NPP in the country about ten years ago doubtful. Belarusian nuclear power plant, against the construction of which Lithuania opposed — ed.). If there was Visaginskaya, there would not be Ostrovets. From the point of view of safety, I think this decision (to freeze the project — ed.) was doubtful. I think that there were a lot of erroneous that time in the political space,» Kreivis quotes. The only Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania was closed at the request of the European Union in 2009, after which work began on its decommissioning. Experts noted that the closure of the station led to a sharp jump in electricity prices for the population of Lithuania, and also undermined the competitiveness of the Lithuanian economy. It is planned to complete the work on the closure of the INPP in 2038, the total cost of the work is 3.316 billion euros. Instead of the closing Ignalina NPP, it was planned to build a nuclear power plant in the city of Visaginas, neighboring Ignalina, but the project was suspended at the design stage and the search for investors. In early November 2020, in Ostrovets, Grodno region of Belarus, hosted the official launch ceremony of the Belarusian nuclear power plant. For the BelNPP, a Russian NPP project with VVER-1200 generation 3+ reactor units was selected, which meets the highest international requirements for reliability and safety. The main opponent of the construction of the BelNPP was Lithuania, whose authorities have criticized the future Belarusian plant almost from the moment Minsk made a decision to build it and initiate a ban on the import of Belarusian electricity to the EU. The parliament of this country previously ruled that the power plant poses a threat to the national security of the republic.
