It’s Hungary’s national economic and national security interest to build the two new nuclear power plant units of Paks, and Rosatom is able to implement the investment – told Péter Szijjártó minister of foreign affairs and trade to MTI, following his meeting with Rosatom leader Alexey Likhachev in Istambul. The minister also told Rosatom made it clear that from a technological point of view they are still able to implement the project. He added: Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority is checking the submitted license approvals, and once the approved licenses have been received, the project can step into the next phase. 

The construction of the two new nuclear power plant units of Paks is in the national security, national economic and national strategic interest of Hungary, and it will make the energy supply of Hungary more secure and reliable – cited MTI the minister. 

The minister emphasized: at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century the world (Europe and Hungary as well) has to face such challenges, which no one expected. It’s not only our physical security, but also the security of energy supply – he added.

He highlighted: the world’s energy market faces extraordinary challenges, and countries, like Hungary, who rely mostly on the import of energy sources, understand these difficulties.
He also said, it is Hungary’s utmost interest to be more and more self-reliant from a power generation point of view and for that it needs capacities, and nuclear energy is the major opportunity of self power generation capacity. 

Péter Szijjártó evaluated: nuclear energy is the cheap, safe and environment friendly way to generate power and enables Hungary to hold on to the results of overhead cost reduction, and meet the goals of environment protection.

As he pointed out, regarding the energy sectors needing daily logistics – mainly gas and oil – there are international debates and challenges. As he continued, he said that is why it’s important to strengthen nuclear energy in Hungary, where nuclear fuel can be stored for several years ahead, therefore the use of nuclear energy provides a significant degree of independence and stability in energy supply.