But for this tiny republic perched high in the Caucasus mountains, closing down the station is not so easy: without the electricity it generates, officials here say, the lights will go out all over the country.

The disagreement is likely to come to a head in the coming months as the EU's 2004 deadline for decommissioning the reactor looms and Armenia shows no sign of being ready, or even wanting, to comply.

Armenia signed an agreement with the EU back in April 1996 to close Metzamor by 2004, said Timothy Marschall Jones, British ambassador to Armenia and currently the EU's ranking representative in the country.

"We want Armenia to respect its commitments," he said. "There remains a catastrophic risk associated with the plant. ...If a suitably large earthquake hit (the station) in the right way then it could fall apart."

Not so, say Armenian energy officials. Deputy Energy Minister Areg Galstyan said the station has been specially designed to be earthquake resistant.

That was proven in the devastating 1988 earthquake which hit the nearby city of Spitak, he said. "During the Spitak earthquake the block survived, there were no problems, it continued to work."

Ultimately, though, the issue for Armenians is not whether Metzamor is safe -- they have accepted that it will have to close sooner or later. For them, the question is how will they manage without a nuclear power station which generates 40 percent of the country's electricity.

After the Spitak quake, the government bowed to popular concerns about safety and closed both Metzamor's reactors. But in 1995 they switched one of the reactors back on in response to public fury about power shortages.

Galstyan shudders at the memory. "We had only three to four hours of electricity a day and industry was falling apart," he said. "By 1995, we had to decide: do we want to live or die."

Of course, none of it is that simple. As Ambassador Jones points out and Galstyan admits, Armenia does have an alternative source of power: gas.

Armenia already generates 40 percent of its electricity from gas-powered fire stations and has the capacity -- with investment in refurbishing gas power stations -- to fill the gap left by Metzamor's closure.

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