Visaginas NPP

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The city of Visaginas is situated in the northeast of Lithuania, 150 km from Vilnius and 8 km from the border with Latvia. It had been founded in 1975 as Sniečkus for the workers of the Ignalina NPP on the shores of the lake Visaginas. Four villages had been demolished for that workers' town, with the biggest one of them known as Visaginas.[1]

Proposals to construct a new NPP at the old Ignalina NPP site, that had been closed in accordance with Lithuania's accession agreement to the EU[2] at the end of 2009, have been made since 2007[3]. First discussions regarding new reactors started alread in the 1990s and were continued in the 2000s[2]. In October 2011, the Lithuanian government informed the European Union about their construction plans[4].

The Visaginas Nuclear Plant Company has been set up by electricity companies of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland on July 30, 2008 to be responsible for the construction of the new NPP. Poland later withdrew from the project. It is supposed to be a 1,300 MW boiling water reactor[4] while earlier a maximum capacity of up to 3,400 MW distributed over two reactors had been announced[2]. On July 14, 2011[4] the GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy has been selected as a strategic investor of the project.[3] The estimated construction costs is 5 billion Euros[2]. However, given interest, inflation and expenses caused by changes in the value of investments it is likely that the costs will be 6.8 billion Euros [5]

In 2020 the NPP is supposed to be ready to be connected to the grid[2].

  • An international anti-nuclear conference focusing on the new NPP construction plans of Lithuania, Belarus and Kaliningrad (Russia) took place in Vilnius (LT) on December 6-8, 2011


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