US group Westinghouse and Japan's Hitachi have bid to build a nuclear power station in Lithuania to replace its only Soviet-era plant, closed in 2009, Vilnius announced Wednesday.

In a statement, Lithuania's Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas said the bids marked a milestone in the project, which also involves neighbouring Poland, Latvia and Estonia.

Sekmokas said the bids were being assessed and that the winner would be selected within months.

In December 2009 Lithuania shut down its Soviet-era plant, similar to that which exploded at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.

The closure was one of the terms of Lithuania's 2004 entry into the European Union.

It left Lithuania, a nation of three million, reliant on Russian energy to generate its electricity. Vilnius' ties with Soviet-era master Moscow have been rocky since it declared independence in 1990.

Progress in building a replacement plant has been sluggish, and was dealt a blow last November when the Korea Electric Power Corporation unexpectedly withdrew its bid, forcing the project back to square one.

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

The planned maximum capacity of the plant is 3,400 megawatts.

Lithuania has been unbowed by the crisis over Japan's Fukushima nuclear power station, which has raised concerns about atomic energy in many countries.

But it repeatedly has criticised plans by Belarus and Russia to build atomic plants near its border, citing safety worries.

Germany this week decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022.

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