"In September we should have the first version of the business plan," Romas Svedas, deputy energy minister, said in an interview with the Lithuanian newspaper Vilniaus Diena.

"We hope that the new plant will be operational not in 2018 ... but three years earlier," he added.

The original target for opening the plant was 2015, but Vilnius later warned of a delay until 2018. Experts have said 2020 is more realistic.

The drive to build a brand new facility in Lithuania has been dogged by discord with neighbouring Estonia, Latvia and Poland, who are Vilnius's partners in the project.

Lithuania is home to a Soviet-era power station near Ignalina in the east of the country, similar in type to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, causing the worst-ever nuclear power accident.

Vilnius pledged to close that plant by 2010 as part of the terms of its admission to the European Union in 2004.

Vilniaus Diena reported that the business plan due for release in September will lay down the future plant's electricity output, its shareholding structure and pricing policy.

Progress has been limited in part due to disagreement about how the power coming out of the plant will be shared.

Poland argues that, with a population of 38 million compared to the combined seven million in its three Baltic partners, it deserves a big slice of the electricity generated.

One of Ignalina's reactors was shut in December 2004 and Lithuania is worried about a looming power shortfall because the plant provides the bulk of its electricity.

Last week, Lithuania's new president Dalia Grybauskaite had appeared to cast doubt on the project.

She stressed that Lithuania must consider plans for the construction of nuclear plants in neighbouring states -- an apparent reference to Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad region, where plans are in the pipeline.

"Given that nuclear energy is geopolitics and knowing that power plants will be built around us, we have to revise our strategy and calculate better investment targets -- wind, geothermal, biomass, waste burning or nuclear energy or all of the above," she said.

But Energy Minister Arvydas Sekmokas said on Thursday that her remarks had been overplayed, saying she was referring to a need for broader energy policy and that the new plant was "not negotiable".

Lithuania's energy minister has said Swedish energy group Vattenfall, Germany's RWE or E.ON, and France's EDF are in the running for the contract to build the plant.

Other companies Vilnius has said are interested include France's Areva, Spain's Endesa, General Electric-Hitachi and Westinghouse from the United States, Britain's Nukem and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

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