BUDAPEST, September 10. /TASS/. Hungary plans to switch its Paks Nuclear Power plant from Russian to French fuel to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, the Telex internet media outlet said on Sunday citing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The Hungarian prime minister spoke at a closed-door Hungarian Civic Forum in Kotcse near Balaton Lake. However Telex learned about what was said by the prime minister from its sources. Thus, according to Telex, while listing the government’s tasks for the upcoming years, he noted that one of the tasks is to reach "energy self-sufficiency, which will rest on using French fuel instead of Russian at the Paks NPP."

France operates the biggest number of nuclear reactors in Europe and manufactures nuclear fuel for them importing uranium from Australia, Niger, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. In recent years, the American company Westinghouse, one of the global leaders in nuclear fuel production, has been looking for alternatives to Russian fuel for pressurized water reactors (VVER) operated at nuclear plants in the European Union and Ukraine.

VVER-type reactors were developed in the former Soviet Union in the 1950s and are the most widely used in the world. In particular, the are working in countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Paks NPP was built with Soviet technologies in the 1980s about 100 kilometers south of Budapest on the banks of the Danube and uses Russian nuclear fuel, which was formerly supplied by rail via Ukraine. The supply route was changed after the armed conflict broke out in that country. First it was shipped across the Black Sea to the Bulgarian port of Varna and then by rail via Bulgaria and Romania.

The four VVER-440 reactors of the Paks NPP provide half of all generated and one third of consumed electricity in Hungary Currently, preparations are underway for the construction of two new power units designed by Rosatom. At the same time, preparations are underway for the construction of facilities as part of the second stage of the Rosatom project. Specifically, those new units are called Paks-2. The Hungarian government expects that after two new VVER-1200 nuclear reactors are commissioned, the plant's capacity will increase from its current levels of 2,000 MW to 4,400 MW.