Lithuania Loses Nuclear Power

…and they’re not happy about facing an even deeper reliance on Russian energy, but such are the requirements being invited to the European club.  The Financial Times reports on the upcoming closure of the Ignalina nuclear power plant:

Ignalina provides 70 per cent of Lithuania’s electricity, and when it shuts down the nation will have nowhere to turn for its energy supplies except Russia – the very country that, in its Soviet guise, annexed Lithuania in the 1940s, deported tens of thousands of its people to Siberia, and did not permit the nation’s independence until the Soviet Union itself fell apart in 1991.

“We’re becoming an energy-isolated island. I’d even call it a Russian monopoly,” says Valdas Adamkus, Lithuania’s president. “We don’t understand the real reason why the EU insisted on closing the Ignalina plant, which is very safe operationally. Finland is building new nuclear power units, and Lithuania is being forced to close something that’s not broken. If you ask if it’s unfair or not, I don’t believe it is fair.”