BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary is working to modify financing for a nuclear plant being built by Russia so it only starts repaying the loan once the two reactors begin supplying power, a Hungarian minister said, after an EU review of the plans contributed to delays in the project.
The existing 2 Gigawatt Paks plant, which accounts for half of Hungary's power capacity and meets a third of consumption, started up in the 1980s and will be decommissioned in the 2030s.
Hungarian tabloid Blikk reported on Saturday that one of the MVM Paks II Zrt manager’s laptop and several data storage devices had been stolen from a car which was broken into. The data related to plans for the expansion of Hungary’s sole nuclear plant, the paper said.
According to Blikk, the incident took place in Budapest as far back as May. The executive, whose identity has not been released, left the vehicle at the Belgrad rakpart embankment for a brief meeting. While the Paks director was gone, the robbers stole a bag containing the notebook and several external drives from the back seat of the car.
Hungary said Monday that the EU's nuclear body Euratom has signed a fuel supply agreement, clearing the way for Russia to build the extension of the country's sole nuclear plant.
Under the deal -- agreed with Euratom at the end of March -- Russia will be able to supply fuel for two new reactors at the Paks plant in central Hungary over a 10-year period.
Hungary’s deal to award up to €12bn in nuclear power contracts to a Russian state-owned company is facing a growing threat from EU regulators who have the power to block the project.
A veto or prohibitive fine from Brussels would be a bruising setback for Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, who has made the project the centrepiece of his strategy to forge deeper political and economic ties with Russia, despite the ostracising of Moscow by the west over Ukraine.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary unexpectedly cut off natural gas shipments to Ukraine on Thursday, days after getting assurances from Russian supplier Gazprom that it would get enough deliveries to fill up its own gas storage facilities.
Hungary had been sending an estimated 3 million cubic meters of natural gas a day to Ukraine, which has not received any from Russia since June. But FGSZ, Hungary's gas transmission firm, said it suspended the flow to Ukraine indefinitely to ensure pipeline capacity for incoming deliveries as it builds its own reserves.
Westinghouse, the Japanese-US atomic group, is pressing the EU to introduce competition rules that will break eastern Europe’s dependence on Russian nuclear fuel.
While the crisis in Ukraine has focused attention on Europe’s vulnerability to a cut in supplies of gas from Russia, Westinghouse argues that Brussels must also respond to similar security risks posed by Moscow’s control of nuclear fuel in the eastern EU.
The EU has 18 Russian-designed nuclear power plants
Following the loss of the Malaysian airliner last week, European leaders are once again wrestling with the question of how to respond to Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.
They are reluctant to get tough, much more so than the United States.
The EU could easily end up doing itself a lot of economic harm, most obviously if Russia were to respond by turning down the gas.
President Janos Ader has signed a law on the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant, according to a statement from the president’s office on Monday.
The president said in the statement that there was nothing in the law, from the point of view of the constitution, that could be considered objectionable, or any point on which it deserved to be sent back to lawmakers for reconsideration.
Hungarian lawmakers have approved a controversial Russian-financed plan to construct two new reactors at the country's only nuclear plant.
Under the deal, Russia will lend Hungary up to 10bn euros (£8.3bn) to build the reactors in the city of Paks.
The government says the bill - which was passed by 256 to 29 votes - will reduce reliance on foreign sources.
But critics argue it will make Hungary fully dependent on Russia, which is already its main oil and gas supplier.
The European Union also expressed concern over the deal's lack of transparency and fair competition.
BUDAPEST, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Hungary's development minister said on Sunday the government should soon complete talks with Russia on a multi-billion dollar sovereign loan that would enable it to start work on two new nuclear reactors.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban signed an agreement earlier this month on a project to add 2.4 gigawatts of nuclear generation capacity at the Paks nuclear plant, more than doubling Hungary's current level.
