Well, it was around 120 km from Vilnius, the new NPP is 60 km from Vilnius which is still sufficient. Leningrad NPP is around 70 km from St. Petersburg.
> Lithuania invested a lot into the safety of the Ignalina Power Plant, installing the latest European safety systems. Partly thanks to EU, yes, but the point is that there was cooperation and safety improvements.
It's still an RBMK and therefore far less safe than any VVER-type reactor.
> Belarus largely ignored the safaty concerns and recommendations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA was on site and inspected the plant:
> https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-delivers-inir-miss...
There is currently also a EU nuclear expert group at the site:
> https://twitter.com/RosatomGlobal/status/1361996208928153604
- Lithuania didn't invest into natural gas -- this is just factually not true.
Quoting: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/04/28/eu-nuclear...
"For Lithuania, which invested a lot of money in a liquefied natural gas floating storage and regasification unit in Klaipeda a few years ago, the Belarussian nuke plant means it is a potentially cheaper, and definitely cleaner, readily available source of power generation for neighboring nations. In theory, that takes Lithuania out of the market. It’s the reason they are working overtime to get countries not to buy energy generated from it."
Wikipedia source on the LNG terminal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaip%C4%97da_LNG_FSRU