"I believe that if Lithuania's economy is to remain competitive, continuing to produce nuclear energy is necessary," said Social Democratic lawmaker Birute Vesaite, who heads the economic committee that examined the feasibility study along with a committee that looked at the social and environmental impacts.

The two committees also urged the government to ensure that Lithuania had a controlling stake in the new power station, which is being built to replace the ageing, Chernobyl-type Ignalina facility, in the east of the country.

"That's only logical, the plant will be built on our soil and we already have a nuclear oversight body," said Vesaite.

The feasibility study conducted by the energy companies of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and published at the end of October, said that building a new nuclear plant in Lithuania to replace Ignalina would cost between 2.5-4.0 billion euros (3.15-5.0 billion dollars).

The new plant could start operations in 2015 -- six years after Lithuania has promised to shut down the last reactor at Ignalina, which the European Union deems unsafe.

The new nuclear plant would allow Lithuania to produce electricity at a lower cost than in traditional power stations, and to increase independence from energy resources from other countries, the head of Lithuania's state-owned energy company Lietuvos Energija, Rimantas Juozaitis, has said.

Lithuania and its Baltic neighbours are heavily dependent on supplies of oil and gas from Russia, which has been steadily increasing the prices of its fuel.

The Baltics' dependence on energy from the east is set to increase even more in 2009 when Lithuania will close the Ignalina nuclear plant, which currently supplies around 70 percent of Lithuania's electricity needs.

German energy giant E.ON has expressed interest in the project to build the new nuclear plant, while France's Areva group, Canada's AECL, and Mitsubishi of Japan have said they are also ready to supply nuclear technologies for the new facility.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.