In central and eastern Europe, nuclear energy is widely seen as indispensable in terms of energy independence from Russia. For example, Lithuania has decided against closing its Soviet-era Ignalina nuclear plant, from which it derives 72 percent of its electricity, despite promises to the EU to shut it by 2009.
Not even the world's worst nuclear power accident has fazed Ukrainian enthusiasm for nuclear power. Despite hundreds dead and thousands chronically ill from the April 1986 accident, Kiev fervently believes in the future of atomic energy.
Ukraine has more than a dozen more reactors planned, and even regularly maintains the last functioning reactor at Chernobyl, a twin of the ancient RBMK unit that exploded.
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