US group Westinghouse presented its bid Thursday to build a nuclear power station in Lithuania to replace a Soviet-era plant, closed in 2009.

"I am very confident and that is also why we are willing to invest in this project and participate as an owner," Anders Jackson, Westinghouse president for Europe told reporters in Vilnius.

Speaking alongside Lithuania's Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, Jackson said he had presented a proposal for delivering the company's latest AP1000 nuclear power plant.

US-based Westinghouse Electric, owned by Japan's Toshiba Corporation, is in competition with Japanese conglomerate Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy to build the new Visaginas nuclear power station.

Hitachi presented it's bid in Vilnius a week ago.

Lithuania will choose one of the bids next month for further negotiations, Kubilius said.

In the wake of Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, Lithuania is keeping plans on track to build the new reactor, unlike Germany and Italy which said they will phase out nuclear energy.

Jackson said Westinghouse offers "the most modern and safest product on the market today."

The Visaginas project also involves neighbouring fellow European Union (EU) states Poland, Latvia and Estonia.

The aim is to have the new plant online by 2020, six years after construction is scheduled to begin.

Lithuania closed its Soviet-era plant in December 2009 under the terms of its EU entry in 2004.

The closure left Lithuania, a nation of three million, reliant on its Soviet-era master Russia for energy supplies.

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