The EU had sought the closure of the vintage Soviet-built plant as early as next year, but it supplies 40 percent of Armenia's electricity and there are no alternative sources of energy.

Gaguik Markossian, the plant's director, said that international credits and aid had enabled a constant improvement in security at the plant, which includes two 440-megawatt reactors, only one of which is in operation.

"The nuclear plant can function without danger until 2016," Markossian said.

The Metzamor plant, 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Yerevan, was commissioned in 1980 but closed in an earthquake in 1988.

With electricity supplies reduced to three or four hours a day and industry in crisis, one of the reactors was restarted in 1995, since when about 35 million dollars (28 million euros) have been spent on various safety improvements.

The Institute for Applied Ecology in Austria says the Armenian plant, along with similar units in Bulgaria, is among the most dangerous in Europe.

Markossian said the EU continues to cooperate in improving security.

Armenia has just signed an agreement under the EU's Tacis program, which provides help to former Soviet countries, to receive a further four million euros for security at the nuclear plant, according to Lussine Aroutiounian, a spokeswoman for the minister of energy.

The deal apparently supersedes a 1996 agreement between the EU and Armenia for the closure of Metzamor next year.

Earlier this year, the EU promised this impoverished Caucasian country 100 million euros for closing the plant.

Armenia has said it will comply once it can develop alternative energy sources to meet the needs of its three-million population.

But plans to build a pipeline to bring natural gas from Iran are stalled while a national program to build wind-generated power plants has so far achieved only two megawatts of capacity, a drop in the ocean compared to the 440 megawatts produced by the one functioning reactor.

Most of Armenia's non-nuclear energy comes from gas supplied from Russia, but the pipeline passes through hostile neighbors in the Caucasus, and Armenia insists it must have its own secure power supply.

TERRA.WIRE