Fuel rods used in Paks to be delivered via Romania, Bulgaria

Hungary and Romania are in talks on creating new transport routes for nuclear fuel rods and increasing the capacity of the gas interconnector between the two countries, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said in Bucharest on Tuesday.

After talks with his Romanian counterpart, Bogdan Lucian Aurescu, Szijjártó told a joint press conference that both countries had made significant efforts to strengthen energy security and diversify resources.

The ministers discussed increasing the capacity of the Romanian-Hungarian interconnector. This year, Romania received more than 600 million cubic meters of natural gas from Hungary through an interconnector with a maximum capacity of 2.6 billion cubic meters, Szijjártó noted. Hungary received 300 million cubic meters through the interconnector, which has a maximum capacity of 1.7 billion cubic meters in that direction, he said. The capacity from Romania to Hungary is planned to be increased to 3 billion cubic meters in the long run, he said.

In view of interruptions of supply on Nord Stream-1, the gas pipeline connecting Russia with Germany, Hungary’s government has decided to boost southern supply lines, he said. “Southern routes are worth boosting also because new resources can only be expected from there, whether through LNG terminals in Greece or natural gas coming from Turkey or Azerbaijan,” he said.

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Hungary has received fuel rods via Ukraine so far, and has now started talks on replacing that route with one through Bulgaria and Romania,

he said. Hungary and Romania are facing “the same threats to their physical, economic and energy supply security in these critical times”, Szijjártó said.