While the meltdown crisis in Fukushima has raised awareness around the world of the dangers of nuclear power, Lithuania, with its limited natural resources, appears to have little choice but to rely on atomic energy to reduce its heavy reliance on natural gas from Russia.
"We now import about 70 percent of electricity from other countries to Lithuania," Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said in a recent interview in Tokyo. "We do not have oil resources, gas resources and coal (resources). So for us, nuclear energy is an obvious choice."
Lithuania plans to build a nuclear plant in Visaginas by 2020 and reached in December a tentative agreement on the construction with Hitachi Ltd. and its Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. unit.