Albania wants to become a nuclear power

Albania is one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe and the situation there is made addedly chaotic by the fact that the country suffers from an acute shortage of electricity. The capital city is plunged into a cacophony of generators, as there are now power cuts for many hours every day. This is mainly because when Bulgarian joined the EU it had to close down one of its reactors which used to export electricity across the Balkans.

But the drought this year has also meant that the country’s old hydroelectric generators do not work. The Prime Minister of the country, Sali Berisha, has now announced that he wants his country to have its own nuclear power station instead. He wants Albania to become “an energy superpower” and claims that various companies have expressed an interest. A power station would cost 3 billion euros, 50 per cent of the country’s GDP. [Jens Tönnesmann, Handelsblatt, 2 December 2007]

---- An excerpt from John Laughland's Intelligence Digest. For a free e-mail subscription to the Intelligence Digest, please click here ----