Hungary's New Government May Refuse To Cooperate With Rosatom

Orban awarded the contract to a company from the Russian Federation without any tender.

"Rosatom" may lose a project in Europe worth almost $15 billion. Hungarian authorities will reconsider the financing and implementation of the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant, said Istvan Kapitani, a candidate for the post of Minister of Economy and Energy. Under Viktor Orban, the Hungarian government in 2014, without any tender, awarded a contract to a Rosatom company to build two new power units. In February 2026, the Russian company finally began building them, writes The Moscow Times.

"We need a transparent nuclear strategy," Kapitani told a parliamentary hearing (quoted by Reuters). - "We must review the financing and costs of the Paks 2 (expansion project) and the terms of its implementation. These are secret contracts that we have not yet familiarized ourselves with and we need to study them." Peter Magyar, who took office as prime minister on May 9 after winning April elections, has also previously said he was ready to review all agreements for the Paks-2 nuclear power plant project, which he called overpriced.

Hungary's only nuclear power plant near the town of Paks (about 100 kilometers from Budapest) was built in the 1970s-80s. It operates four power units with VVER-440 reactors. The Paks-2 project envisages the construction of two new units with VVER-1200 reactors (#5 and 6) with a combined capacity of 2.4 GW.

After long delays, Rosatom said in February that it had begun pouring the "first concrete" into the foundation of the reactor building for Unit 5. This "marks the facility's transition to the status of a 'nuclear power plant under construction' according to IAEA standards," the state corporation said:

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