Nuclear power in Europe

From the Baltic to Bulgaria, governments in Eastern Europe are increasingly looking toward a revival of nuclear power generation to meet growing energy demand.

The renewed interest in nuclear energy in a region that has been under intense pressure from the European Union to close unsafe older- generation plants coincides with a lively debate in several West European countries, in which governments seek cleaner energy options to combat climate change.

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - Atom­stroyexport, a Russian nuclear power construction company, said on Tuesday it had completed repairs on the concrete and steel shell encasing the Chernobyl reactor one month ahead of schedule.

The work involved repairs of an area around 420 square meters over the central part of the reactor's protective shelter.

By Patrick Lannin and Nerijus Adomaitis

VISAGINAS, Lithuania (Reuters) - When Lithuania's sole nuclear power station closes next year, European Union officials will sigh with relief, but nearby residents are already fretting over the future of their town.

The EU's concern is safety. The Ignalina plant has the same type of reactors as Chernobyl in Ukraine, where a 1986 reactor meltdown caused the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Lithuania's state-controlled Lietuvos Elektrine (Lithuanian Power Plant, or LPP) has invited international bids to design and build a new combined cycle gas turbine plant (CCGT) with a capacity of 350 to 450 megawatts (MW), the Economy Ministry said on Wednesday.

The project, worth an estimated 720 million litas (EUR 209 mln), is part of ongoing upgrades at the LPP, which will become the main generator of electricity in Lithuania after the shutdown of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) in 2009. The CCGT project will be financed from the Ignalina International Decommissioning Support Fund, which is administered by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and other resources, the ministry said. The new plant will produce electricity at around half the cost of power generated by the existing units of the LPP.