Ergma: Estonia should build nuclear plant

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

TALLINN - Estonian Parliamentary Speaker Ene Ergma has urged the legislature to consider the construction of a nuclear power plant in the country.

At the first meeting of the autumn session, the speaker said that the country needed a new power source in response to Russia’s use of energy supplies as a political tool.

“Energy is one of the most important issues regarding which we need clarity and decisions… The longer we put off those decisions the harder it will be to make and implement them in the future,” Ergma said.

Estonia has already signed on as a partner in a pan-Baltic project to build a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania to replace the Soviet-era plant at Ignalina, which is slated to shut down at the end of the year.

The project has run been held up by political manoeuvring between the four members of the project – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. Ergma said Estonia should learn from the prolonged project.

“Let the Lithuanian case be a warning to us…A lack of reasonable alternatives may place Lithuanian quite a complicated situation in the coming years,” she said.

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