At the traditional annual Nordic-Baltic (NB8) Speakers Conference, the Speaker of the Seimas, Mrs Irena Degutienė, invited the countries to immediately engage in closer cooperation in order to prevent the development of potentially unsafe nuclear energy projects in the vicinity of the EU.
The lack of attention on the part of the international community enables the construction of unsafe nuclear power plants at the borders of the European Union. Therefore, the European Union must find means to promote the neighbouring countries to engage in closer cooperation on the issues of nuclear safety. One of the instruments may be to consider the possibility of restricting electricity imports from third countries if the neighbouring countries fail to comply with the international nuclear safety standards, Mrs Degutienė said.
The Speaker of the Seimas underlined that nuclear safety is a cross-border challenge, thus not only Lithuania must be concerned about the nuclear power plants in Kaliningrad and Belarus. Neither Russia nor Belarus has presented the environmental impact assessment of the nuclear power plants to be constructed and current bilateral communication between Lithuania and the two countries concerning the environmental impact assessment and compliance with the procedures laid down in the international conventions may be considered as a waste of time since no response has been received. Information about both nuclear power plants being constructed by the Russian state enterprise Rosatom, which is planning to install the reactors that have not been tested in practice, is also very scarce.
Another cause of concern is the information that Russia will be responsible for the safety of the nuclear power plant in Belarus whereas Rosatom has let out that it will grant only a two-year warranty to the Belarusian nuclear power plant, as if it was a refrigerator or a television set.
Mrs Degutienė noted the plans to use the waters of the two largest Lithuanian rivers that fall into the Baltic Sea for cooling the reactors. Almost all NB8 countries border the Baltic Sea which will later be used to transport nuclear waste.
Secretariat of the Speaker of the Seimas
Juozas Ruzgys, Advisor to the Speaker of the Seimas, tel.: + 370 5 2396023; +370 698 42073
