The Hungarian government has signed an agreement with Belarus to assist in the construction of Hungary's second nuclear power plant, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó.
The Hungarian nuclear power plant Paks-2 has been under construction by Russia's Rosatom since 2014. The Russian company is building two reactors with a capacity of 1.2 GW each at Paks-2 in central Hungary.
"Of great importance is the agreement signed here today on nuclear energy cooperation, which allows us to use the experiences Belarus gained here while constructing reactors with a similar technology," said Szijjártó, without providing details of the agreement.
The implementation of the €12.5 billion project has been ongoing for a long time, despite nuclear energy not being subject to European Union sanctions against Russia imposed due to the war against Ukraine.
Hungary, which receives most of its energy from Russia, opposes expanding the sanctions to include this sector.
Since the Russian invasion two years ago, the Hungarian government has strained relations with Kyiv and maintained better ties with Moscow than other EU states.
Hungarian nuclear power plant
The Paks-2 project is an expansion of the existing Paks, which is the first and only operating nuclear power plant in Hungary.
The 2 GW Paks plant provides over 50% of the total domestic electricity production and about one-third of the country's total electricity consumption.
The existing facility is planned to be fully decommissioned by 2037 and replaced with two new nuclear power units with a total capacity of 2.4 GW to fill the supply gap.
The Belarusian nuclear power plant was built by Russia by 2020 near the EU borders.