Swedish aid keeps Ignalina nuclear plant alive

Sweden is providing development assistance to Lithuania that is helping to keep the Ignalina nuclear reactor alive for the time being.

As reported in DT 22/93, Swedish support is being channelled via the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI), which is assisting Lithuanian authorities to manage an international tender for an intermediate-term storage facility for spent fuel for Ignalina 1.

Sweden argues that Lithuania needs the reactors to provide electricity over the coming decade.

Lithuania cannot afford to build a long-term storage facility, estimated to cost some USD 136 million. Swedish support thus ensures continued operation of Ignalina 1, whose existing pool is almost full, without addressing the long-term issue.

Swedish aid to Ignalina has amounted to SEK 70 million from 1991 to mid-1993, with an additional SEK 48 million budgetted up to 1994.

The Ignalina 1 and 2 are plants, like Chernobyl, classified by the G-7 as being among the 25 “unsafe" reactors in the ex-Soviet bloc. But Ignalina is more dangerous than Chernobyl because it is bigger, it is built on a geological fault, and the radiation protection agency VATESI is weaker than it was before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.