Nuclear power hopes on the back burner

"Polish hopes of obtaining power from a nuclear plant as early as 2018 will misfire" if Lithuania shelves its plans for the construction of the Ignalina II reactor, warns Dziennik. The hint was dropped last week by Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite who suggested that the building of the new reactor in Ignalina — a joint project between Lithuania, Poland, Latvia and Estonia — is no longer a priority for Vilnius. According to experts quoted by the Warsaw daily, the decision may mean that Poland will face power shortages when the economy picks up after the current crisis. Remigiusz Chlewnicki of Ernst & Young highlights the fact that "power imports from Lithuania were to give Poland a partial measure of energy security." If the reactor does not go ahead, spending on conventional power sources may need to be boosted, and Poland could face additional energy costs of PLN 60 billion (€14.4 billion) over the next 20 years. Helping to modernise the Ignalina plant was also a opportunity for the Poles to field test expertise in the run-up to the construction of their first wholly owned nuclear power plant. For Mariusz Przybylik of the consultancy firm A.T. Kearney, if Poland is unable to join similar projects in Slovakia or Belarus, power imports from Germany or Slovakia will become a necessity.