Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas Thursday invited Poland to take part in a project to build a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania.
"Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are participating in this project and we invite Poland to participate in it," Kirkilas told reporters in Warsaw after holding talks here with Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia gave their backing in February to the construction of a new nuclear power plant.
It aims to replace Lithuania's ageing Ignalina power station, which has two RBMK reactors, the type that exploded at Chernobyl in the then-Soviet Union in 1986, provoking the world's worst nuclear disaster.
Lithuania pledged to close the Ignalina plant completely in 2009 when it joined the European Union in 2004.
Ignalina supplies over 70 percent of the electricity used in Lithuania, and Vilnius fears that closing the plant could raise energy prices and make the Baltic state even more dependent on Russia, its sole supplier of gas and oil.
A feasibility study aimed at evaluating the technological, environmental, legal and economic aspects of the new nuclear plant is expected to be completed by November this year.
Poland currently has no nuclear power stations. Kaczynski last week urged Poland to develop nuclear power so it is "not left behind" as the European Union moves away from high-pollutant forms of energy to nuclear energy.
During their talks Thursday, Kirkilas and Kaczynski also discussed linking the energy grids of their countries. Lithuania has for several years been pressing for such an "energy bridge" to be established.
