Lithuania hopes to sign a deal with a Hitachi-GE joint venture by the end of 2012 to build a 1300 MW nuclear power plant.

It is hoped that the plant would be completed by 2020 and is intended to cut the country’s power dependence on Poland, the Baltic states and Russia, Shozo Saito, chairman of Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, told an energy conference in Vilnius today.

Lithuania’s energy minister Arvydas Sekmokas explained that Latvia, Estonia and Poland had all expressed taking a stake in the plant in return for a share of its generated electricity, and a final decision from all three countries was due by early next year.