BUDAPEST, February 15. /TASS/. French company Framatom SAS can take a broader role in the project to build the Paks-2 nuclear power plant (NPP) in Hungary if the German government refuses to issue a permit for Siemens AG to participate in the project, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
Szijjarto reiterated that a while ago, a consortium of France’s Framatom SAS and Germany’s Siemens AG won a tender to manufacture and install automated control systems for the Paks NPP. The French government has issued a permission for Framatom to take part in the project, while Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habec and Foreign Minsiter Annalena Baerbock continue to block Siemens participation.
"We are working on various [contingency] plans with Framatom to guarantee that the [Paks NPP] project won’t be delayed," he said in an interview with Hungarian journalists on Tuesday night, after talks with Framatom top management and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. "French participation will be broadened if the German government continues to stick to its unfounded position."
"Every country has the right to shape its energy balance in accordance with its national interests," the Hungarian top diplomat added. "Germany has been challenging our right to do so, therefore creating a threat to our long-term energy security. This is unacceptable."
About Paks NPP
The Paks NPP, which was built with Soviet technologies, and which uses Russian nuclear fuel, provides half of all generated and one third of consumed electricity in Hungary. At present, four power units with VVER-440 reactors operate at the station built about 100 kilometers south of Budapest on the banks of the Danube. 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.
In October 2021, JSC Rusatom - Automated Control Systems (RASU, a subsidiary of Rosatom) and the Franco-German consortium Framatome SAS-Siemens AG signed an agreement in Moscow on the manufacture and commissioning of automated process control systems for two new power units of the Paks NPP. Earlier, as part of this project, a contract was signed for the manufacture of turbines by GE Hungary Kft, which is a Hungarian subsidiary of US company General Electric. With this in mind, the withdrawal of nuclear energy from EU sanctions is of particular importance for the Paks-2 project.