LMP: Transport, storage of damaged Paks fuel rods unlawful

Budapest, April 20 (MTI) – The transport and final storage of fuel rods damaged in a 2003 incident at the Paks Nuclear Power Station violated the 2011 directive on nuclear waste, an MEP of the green opposition LMP party said on Monday.

The fuel rods were transported to Russia in 2014 under a contract that was not approved by the relevant European authority, Benedek Javor told a press conference.

The damaged fuel rods were transported through war-torn Ukraine with serious security risks, Javor said. Also, the fuel rods were deposited for final storage at the Mayak nuclear facility in Russia, among the most radioactively polluted sites on Earth, he added.

In 2013, the government amended the original contract for transporting and storing the rods, which in 2011 had been endorsed by the Euratom Supply Agency, but it failed to inform the agency about this, claiming that it was only a technical amendment. However, Javor said he had been told by the agency that any such contract is valid only if it has been endorsed by the agency.

Javor added that he would submit a complaint to the European Commission.

The transport of fuel rods was carried out by fully observing international guidelines and regulations by Hungarian authorities, the spokesman for the Paks company said on Monday, in response to Javor’s statement.

The contract concluded by Paks and the Russian FCJaRB company on the transport and final storage of fuel rods in 2009 was signed by the EU’s Euratom Supply Agency (ESA) as a third party in April, 2010, following minor correction in company data, Antal Kovacs said in a statement.

Photo: galaktika.hu

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters