The warning

The European Union said on March 23 that Lithuania must close its sole atomic power station by 2009, warning that a failure to commit to that date could jeopardize Lithuania's bid for EU membership. EU officials said the age of the twenty-year-old, Soviet-built reactors at the Ignalina power plant dictate they be closed before 2010. The EU has earlier warned that Ignalina poses an environmental threat to the region. The government in January approved a plan to shut down one of two reactors at the power plant, but it hasn't yet decided the fate of the second reactor. The endorsement of the closure plan, initiated by an earlier administration, sets out a detailed schedule for switching off the first reactor at Ignalina, some 130 kilometers north of the capital, Vilnius. The EU has repeatedly urged Lithuania to shut down the entire plant, but it hadn't before suggested a deadline by which it would like that to happen. Lithuania has said it wants to finish its current membership talks with the EU in 2002 and enter the powerful economic bloc in 2004. The EU hasn't yet fixed a clear timetable for accepting new members. International donors, mostly from the 15 members of the EU, have pledged some 200 million dollars to help pay for closing the first reactor. That's roughly the amount Lithuania said it needed for the project. Ignalina's two reactors are the same type as those at Chernobyl, Ukraine—site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986—though they have had safety upgrades since Lithuania regained independence. The facility generates more than 70 percent of Lithuania's electricity and does so more cheaply than other forms of power, allowing the country to keep its energy costs to consumers relatively low. Many Lithuanians fear that closing Ignalina and developing alternative energy sources would be too costly, running into the billions of dollars by some estimates, and could damage Lithuania's economy.