VILNIUS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th January, 2021) Lithuania will establish a government commission with the task of blocking electricity supplies from third countries in line with the regional plan to synchronize with the European electricity grid, Lithuanian news portal Elta reported on Wednesday, citing the government.
According to the report, the Lithuanian government approved at a meeting on Wednesday the proposal of the Ministry of Energy to form a government commission to coordinate issues concerning the implementation of the power synchronization project and work out protective measures against the threats emanating from unsafe nuclear power plants in third countries.
Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys was quoted as saying that "the launch of the Belarusian nuclear power plant made it necessary to effectively prevent the feeding in of electricity from third countries and ensure unhindered operations of the [domestic] energy system."
According to Kreivys, as cited in the report, the commission will be led by Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte and include officials dealing with energy, environment, finance, foreign affairs and agriculture, as well as representatives of the State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate and the National Energy Regulatory Council. The commission will also reportedly include the heads of state-owned power companies EPSO-G, Ignitis and Litgrid.
The energy systems of the Baltic countries � Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia � have historically been synchronized with those of Belarus and Russia, primarily due to the geographic proximity and common past within the Soviet Union. In 2007, the Baltics, together with Poland, launched an initiative to synchronize their electricity grid with the European Union instead. The plan is to achieve it by 2025.
Lithuania has been opposed to the Belarusian nuclear power plant (NPP) since the time it was still a project on paper. The Lithuanian parliament even legislated that the plant threatened the country's national security. The plant has passed all standard and additional checks of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The plant is located in Astravets, a town in Belarus' northwestern part in the close vicinity of Lithuania's border.
The Belarusian NPP is a joint Russian-Belarusian project, with the construction under the supervision of a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear agency. The plant has two reactors with a combined capacity of 2,400 Megawatt. The first unit is expected to become fully operational by March of this year, and the second one in 2022.
