Orbán: Nuclear energy only way to produce sustainable, safe electricity

Speaking at the Nuclear Energy Summit 2024, organised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Orbán noted that Hungary has been using nuclear energy for some 50 years, “and this provides a stable basis for the safety of our energy supply”.

Around half of Hungary’s electricity is produced by its nuclear plant, which covers about one-third of its demand, he said.

“Based on this experience, we decided not only to maintain our already existing capacity, but to invest more into nuclear, and to increase its share into 70 percent when it comes to national electric supply,” Orbán said in his speech delivered in English.

“The challenges we have been faced with recently have further raised the significance of safe and secure supply of energy,” he said.

“The question became absolutely obvious: how can we generate big quantity of electricity in a cheap, safe, sustainable and environmentally friendly way. The answer is clear: it is only the nuclear way of generating electricity which can simultaneously satisfy all these requirements.”

Orbán said that “a new capacity of 2,400 megawatt will be connected to the grid” at the beginning of the next decade.

“This will enable us to avoid imports of 3.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas every year, and our annual CO2 emission will be decreased by 17 million tonnes, which equals 1.5 times more than the emission of the entire Hungarian transportation sector and three times more compared what all Hungarian forests can digest.

“We are happy to note that regardless of the geopolitical difficulties, a wide range international, professional and scientific cooperations still exist on the field of nuclear energy, while Russia became the number one Uranium supplier of the United States this year, a number of American, German, French, Swedish, Swiss and even Austrian sub-contractors are working together with the Russian constructor of our nuclear expansion project.”

“It is the interest of all of us to prevent nuclear energy to become hostage of geopolitical conflicts, hypocrisy and ideological debates. Therefore let me finally thank all of you to interfere into the European Court case regarding our nuclear investment and to ensure the safe delivery of nuclear fuel to our existing plant.”

Speaking to journalists, Orbán reiterated that the issue of energy often became hostage to an ideological approach which, he said, was “bad”, arguing that energy was neither an ideological nor a geopolitical question, and should be rescued from that “trap”.

Orbán stated Hungary’s full support for nuclear energy as the only energy source that did not degrade the environment while providing large quantities of energy.