The Board of the Seimas (parliament) established the task group on Tuesday. It will have until 12 December to come up with a conclusion as to how the results of October's non-binding referendum on the new nuclear facility should be implemented.
PM-designate and Social Democratic leader Algirdas Butkevičius said early in November that a legislative act stating that the nuclear power plant – the Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant (VNPP) – should not be built would have to be worked out in the Seimas as a follow-up to people’s will expressed through the referendum. However, he did not rule out that some other reactors might be built in Lithuania in the future.
In late October, right after the parliamentary elections, Butkevičius said that he was in favor of nuclear energy but was so far not inclined to support this particular project, which is being implemented in strategic partnership with Japan’s Hitachi.
Some 52.58 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 14 October non-binding referendum on building a new nuclear facility in Lithuania. Almost two-thirds, or 62.68 percent, of people who cast ballots said "no" to the nuclear project.
The outgoing government, comprised of the Conservatives and the Liberals, planned to build the new nuclear facility in Visaginas by around 2020. A draft of the facility’s concession agreement was approved in May and the agreement was to be signed by the end of this year.
