"The agreed terms and the initialed concession agreement show that energy produced by the plant will be very competitive in the market. Thus, Lithuania receives a very good business project and guarantees its key national security interests by ensuring sufficient energy production. Also, that provides a very good base load power source, which then creates the preconditions for developing renewable resources as well," Darius Semaška told the Žinių Radijas radio station.
"As we know, existing renewable energy technologies do not guarantee continuous, stable base load power generation," he said.
Semaška thinks that people should back the nuclear power plant project in a referendum.
"If such a referendum is held, then the vote should be definitely yes. Experts and studies performed in preparation for this project have shown that demand for electricity will be huge, while existing production capacities are insufficient. Lithuania, as we know, now exports a great deal of energy and spends between 2 billion and 3 billion litas (EUR 580-870 m) on energy imports," he said.
Following more than a year of negotiations, the Lithuanian government and Japan's Hitachi initialed a concession agreement for the Visaginas nuclear power plant last Friday. This is the first significant step toward implementing what is Lithuania's biggest energy project yet.
The Visaginas plant's strategic investor is Hitachi Ltd together with Hitachi-GE Nuclear Services.
