Having been selected as 'strategic investor' for the Visaginas nuclear power project, Hitachi-GE is expected to build a nuclear power plant there for operation in 2020. 

An announcement at the start of June revealed that Lithuanian officials had invited both Hitachi-GE and Westinghouse to submit proposals for Visaginas, which is to be a new power plant to replace generation lost with the shutdown of Ignalina.

After six weeks of consideration, the Ministry of Energy has today said that the evaluation commission has selected Hitachi-GE's proposal, based on the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor. Plans are for a single unit producing about 1300 MWe to begin operation from about 2020.

Partners in the project, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, participated in the evaluation, which encompassed a wide range of factors to determine which of the two proposals was the "most economically advantageous."

Some site preparation work has already taken place at Visaginas, and it already holds positive verdicts on environmental impact assessment and site suitability. The site is close by to Ignalina, where two large RBMK units built in the Soviet era provided some 2370 MWe, setting Lithuania's share of nuclear energy at 70% and giving healthy supply of power for export.

Visaginas is one of several active nuclear projects in the European Union. Single reactors are currently under construction in Finland and France, with more at the planning stage in each country. Two units are nearing completion in Slovakia, while plans for new build are maturing in the Czech Republic, Romania, the Netherlands and the UK.

Source: World Nuclear News