Latvia should build a nuclear power plant together with Estonia, Latvian Minister of Defense Artis Pabriks (Development/For) said on Twitter.
In the future, Latvia will have to combine three energy resources – wind and solar power, as well as energy produced at a nuclear power plant, plus limited gas supplies, Pabriks points out.
He believes that the nuclear power plant should be built together with the Estonians, in Estonia, using the latest technology from Sweden and Canada.
The minister points out that such projects take long time to implement, but if planning begins already now, the first section of the nuclear power plant can be built by 2028 or 2029.
As reported, Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins (New Unity) said last week that, in just one week, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime with its war in Ukraine had brought the European Union and NATO together and given a huge impulse to the development of green energy.
Karins also said that the government was working on alternative gas supplies and increasing access to renewable energy.
The government has agreed in principle to develop strategic wind farm projects, tasking state-owned companies Latvenergo and Latvijas Valsts Mezi with setting up a joint venture in charge of these projects. The government will also launch a support program to promote the use of renewable energy in households, facilitating a transition from gas heating to systems using renewable energy, said Karins.
In the meantime, Estonian power utility Eesti Energia CEO Hando Sutter earlier said in an interview with LETA that power consumption in the Baltic countries was not high enough for building a nuclear reactor in the Baltics.
“Speaking of the Baltic countries, we have to understand that these are comparatively small markets. Daily power consumption in the Baltic countries is one-third of Finland’s power consumption. We simply do not consume so much power that we would need a nuclear reactor here. However, if small-volume reactors arrive on the market one day, we could consider this, but at the moment such technology is unavailable,” said Sutter.
Source: The Baltic Times
