Category: Climate and Energy Policy

The European Parliament has accepted a decision by member states to allow diesel cars to emit double the legal emission limit of nitrogen oxide until 2020.

The EP voted on Wednesday (3 February) to accept the decision by representatives of national governments made in October that, following the entry into force of a more accurate testing method next year, new models would be allowed to emit nitrogen oxide at a rate of 168 milligrams per kilometre, despite an EU limit of 80mg/km.

It has been a bad week for the government and all the avid supporters of the Paks expansion project. The European Commission announced the launch of three procedures in the last seven days in connection with the plans of the new nuclear power plant. First an infringement procedure was launched by the Internal Market Commissioner on the violation of EU public procurement rules. Secondly, the DG for Environment decided to further examine the classification of information contained in the Paks documents, as they might violate rules concerning the publicity of environmental information. These two procedures were launched subsequent to my complaints. And lastly, yesterday Margrethe Vestager, the Commissioner in charge of competition, drew the conclusion following her preliminary investigation that  state aid by the Hungarian government cannot be excluded  despite the contrary clames of the government; therefore, she wishes to have a more thorough investigation on the question.

Bet let us not be misled: the biggest problem with the Paks expansion is not that it violates EU competition or public procurement legistlation, but the fact that this is an investment that causes serious damages not only to Hungarian tax-payers and Hungarian electricity consumers, but also to the environmental heritage of our country. Furthermore, the Hungarian society is constantly deceived about the project; this is how this corruptive Eldorado is being sold to those who – for some reason – are unwilling to see the facts.

Furthermore, this is not only  hypothesis. Today I published an 80-page expert analysis,  on the environmental impact assessment documentation (EIAD) of the new plants, done by experts I hired. The conclusions of the expert analysis are devastating. They reveal that the EIAD on the expansion is extremely low-quality; it is based on false data and false assumptions and has very little to do with reality. What is being given a permit in this case is not the actual power plant, but some surreal dream, as a consequence of which reality is constantly being distorted in order to somehow justify this delirium.

 

Come, lie something adequate!

The dates for the system-integration of the two new blocks are already wrongly indicated in the permit-request: the permit for system-integration is released for 2025 and 2030, even though we know that the target dates prescribed in the Russian-Hungarian execution contract are 2025 and 2026. The significance of the four-year-difference is quite grand: this is what decides how long the four old and two new blocks will operate simultaneously. However, from an environmental perspective, the transition between the old and new blocks is critical, because during this time, the Danube River will be loaded with 232 m³ of heated cooling-water (the old blocks producing 100, the new ones 132 m³ of extraction), for example. The EIAD generously cheats off 4 years, that is, nearly half of the time lapse in questionfor this critical condition.

Beyond the above, the plan of the facility waiting for the permit is also false. It becomes clear from both the EIAD and tother documents that while they wish to solve the storage of spent fuel in a temporary storage facility, which is yet to be built in the vicinity of the power plant, this facility is nowhere to be found in the permit-request or the EIAD. The permit and description of the “high-technology cooling system”, which the EIAD itself deems necessary to avoid overheating the Danube, that is, constantly exceeding limits pertaining to the Danube’s temperature, is also missing.

The estimation on expected electricity prices is completely false; practically, they have been keeping, for years now, to their estimation of 1.3% increase in consumer demand, which has not been not been the case ever since the financial crisis of 2007-2008; instead, in reality there is stagnation or sometimes even decrease. The price calculations and estimations on the expected price of electricity are false.

There are harsh distortions in the assumptions about the water flow and water temperature of the Danube River. The first – rather ridiculous – point of reference in the water discharge calculation made by tthe EIAD was 1500 m3/sec. But this was too much even for the other times quite flexible authority, so it noted that warm-water extraction will cause problems not in case of average water levels, obviously, but when the Danube has lesser water flowing through, during times when the river is warm anyway, that is, hot summer drought periods. The authority has prescribed the necessity to develop heat-load-models for a 950 m³/s of water discharge as well (let me add here that the Danube’s lowest water levels are around 750 m³). Although during the process of completing deficiencies, this problem was formally resolved, trickery wasn’t avoided. They take a single year’s data as basis to declare a negligible probability for the Danube’s background temperature to be high and at the same time its river-flow to be low. However, if they had looked back on the past 30-40 years of data, they wouldn’t have written down such a statement, because as these data show, there can be multiple occasions in a year of such critical weeks, when, predictably, temperature limits will be impossible to keep to. In such a case the power plant will either be shut down – further exacerbating the already horrifyingly bad return on the investment – or they exceed the limit, pay a probably less harsh financial penalty, and that’s it. Which option do you think they will choose?

However, even a model based on these extended series of data could not completely reflect reality, because we have to take the effects of climate change into account: decreasing water flow and increasing temperature. Even the conductors of the assessment did not dare to completely ignore climate change in 2015; however, their applied climate-model – well, saying it’s hurrah-optimistic is quite an understatement. A 1.8 degrees Celsius rise in the average global temperature by 2100, estimated by the developers of the Paks project, is literally the smallest estimation I have come across during the preparation for the Paris climate summit at the end of the month. Even the 2 degrees Celsius, which is the target of the climate agreement, and the reaching of which currently seems to be light-years away, is higher than the Hungarian estimation.

Moreover, the estimations for utilizations are false as well. Without collateral investments – about which the documentation is silent about – the two new blocks will be utilizable only in a schedule-tracking mode, especially during the phase when the new blocks will operate simultaneously with the four old ones – this will deeply undermine their utilization below the planned 95%, which is something that even a recent national  Transmition System Operator (MAVIR)  study warned about. Lower utilization, in return, will cause increased production prices , thus crushing the last pillars from under the calculations of the developers of the Paks project that were completely flawed anyway. Produced electricity will, therefore, be expensive, so in order to be able to sell it and not push the entire power plant into bankruptcy, you, dear tax-payers, will pay the price. Worth it, is not it?

 

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for

Given the above, we can seafely say that the EIAD is based on a series of flawed assumptions and false data, but what is not included at all is also worth noting. The fact that the planned new power plant on Paks will be a Russian type that was never used in any other part of the world, is completely left out. We don’t even exactly know what it will contain: only the basic template or did we ask for additional, e.g any safety-increasing extensions? Will the Hungarian NPP be similar to the Belarus or the Finnish one? In the case of such a prototype, uncertainty is always greater: there are solutions here that are being tested for the first time, the practical performance or reliability of which we know very little about. The EIAD generously ignores to analyse these risks and uncertainties. ‘We will build up the new power plant in ten years and it will operate at a 95% utilization,’ they say. In the meanwhile, altogether three Russian power plant constructions were given over in the last ten years, all of which took 19-27 years to build. And what if PaksII will not be built in ten years? Failure, thanks to the government to have signed a loan with the Russians, in which we bind ourselves to pay back that loan from  15^th of March, 2026, even if the power plant is not completed by that time. An annual 2-300 billion forints will have to be produced in a way that will only take but not produce money in the first stage. In comparison: the entire annual income of the current Paks Power Plant (not the profit, mind you – the income!) is around 170-200 billion forints. This is what we will have to force 2-300 billion reimbursement out of.

The EIAD does not take possible cooling alternatives into consideration, either. The environmentally more beneficial but also more expensive solution of closed systems, such as a cooling tower, was among the more strongly supported solutions in earlier studies (the documents of the Lévai-project); now the EIAD generously stepped over this option and focused solely on the examination of fresh-water cooling (extract cool water out of the Danube and releasing warm water back into it). Necessary collateral investments are scarcely mentioned.

The need for a 400-kilovolt wire is mentioned to drive produced electricity away, but not its costs. The question of a safety reserve is also left unresolved. Briefly, it is about the fact that in all electricity systems, it is necessary to build a reserve for the system’s largest electricity producing unit in order for it to become an immediate substitute in case of malfunction without causing a blackout in half the country. Currently, the biggest units of the power plant are the 500 MW blocks. We have reserve capacities for these. The new blocks, however, will be 1200 MW blocks, which means that there is a need for the establishment of a 700 MW reserve capacity (one and a half times larger than the current Paks block) in order to comply with the system requirements. Has anyone heard governmental officials tweet about this at any point? Anything on how and with what technology and at what cost will this be constructed? Well, the EIAD is also deeply silent about it. As it is silent about the necessary system regulation elements as well, even though during simultaneous operation – if they do not wish to operate the plants at half-performance – these have to be concerned, because of night-time overcapacities, for example (the six Paks blocks together will, in themselves, produce more energy than what the country actually consumes, ie more than the base load). Hitherto, there has been only one expert recommendation for this issue: a pumped storage facility, which can cost 3-400 billion forints and wonderful debates about which hill we should destroy for its construction.

My uncle, called Reality

However what is not a lie and is not missing from the documentation, i.e., what is more or less seemingly realistic, also gives reason for serious concern. Although heat-load models are based on false data, they still suggest the possibility of constant difficulties with keeping the prescribed limits for the Danube’s temperature. The recommendation for such an occurrence is either temporarily shutting down the power plant or the development of the so-called “high-technology cooling system”. Do we find any allusion in the EIAD to the permission of such a high-tech facility (e.g. a cooling lake)? Of course not.

The principle of multi-level security is commonly accepted when it comes to NPPs; however, what raises safety concerns in the Paks case is exactly the question of cooling-water supply, which is the Achilles’ heel of power plants in general – because in Paks we will only have a single security system. There is only one cool-water canal transmitting cooling water to the plant; if something happens to this canal, there is no cooling water. What this means is that we have not a single, but actually merely half-security, as the very same single cooling canal will be the one supplying the new blocks as well. The capacity of this canal, in its current form, is not sufficient to supply all of the six blocks (4 old + 2 new) simultaneously, therefore it has to be deepened by two meters. This will be executed in a way that PaksI will constantly operate in the meantime. I repeat: the cooling canal will be dug up while PaksI will be constantly operating at full performance. This infers unacceptable safety risks. What would you think about a car mechanic who recommend fixing your car’s cooling system on the M1 highway while going with 130 km/h?

We could go on and about, describing the series of problems with the documentation. For those who are interested in the details I would suggest reading the complete study (note of the editor:the executive summary is avialable in English).

However, based on all the above, we could safely say that this EIAD cannot be taken as a basis for an environmental permit for the Paks expansion.

 

We demand the authority to refuse issuing a permit due to the provision of false data!

We demand the conduction of a new impact assessment documentation, based on real data and real models, that truly analyses all occurring problems!

We demand the prescription of an entirely new conceptual approach for the fulfilment of environmental requirements, e.g. for the solution of the cooling system (cooling tower, cooling lake, etc.)!

And above all, we demand all insidious lies to be stopped!

We will not let small-scale political interests to bring on unbearable financial burdens to be paid back by current and future generations, we will not let them to make the Danube River constantly overheated for 60 years in advance and we will not let them create safety risks that have never been authorized by anyone!

The environmental impact assessment documentation (EIAD) provided by the investor is incomprehensible, including a mass of information which is often contradictory and difficult to follow. It is possible that even the authors themselves had problems seeing that mass of information to an extent that would have been necessary for coherent editorial follow-up of changes. The study shows serious signs of hastiness; conditions to concepts created in different time phases are mixed in both the written and graphic materials. The editing, which was seemingly aimed at producing a mass of information rather than relevant content, resulted in a study full of redundancies with materials that are either irrelevant or are not necessarily connected to the project concerned.

The conditions and requirements for building nuclear facilities have undergone significant changes in the last few decades. The amount of electricity produced in nuclear power plants has reached its peak during the 90s; it has shown a descending tendency ever since.

The costs and time need for realizing new European reactors show significant risks. The complete expenses of these investments can only be estimated with great uncertainty, they are, in fact, unpredictable. The financial impact of the construction delays exceeding the deadlines are of a similar magnitude than those coming from the inflation of costs during construction periods.

The consequences of cost-escalation, which are typical of building nuclear power plants, occur even with projects undertaken by European nuclear power plant investors with significant routine, such as EDF and TVO. Not even the EPC contract is guarantee enough against cost-escalation by itself, as higher costs are in the interest of the main investor. The expected risks of the Paks expansion project cannot be adequately assessed, because neither the financial agreements nor the EPC contracts are accessible. Most of the experts who have experience in similar major investments have retired. It is highly improbable that the employees of Paks II Ltd., who were mainly selected from the operator circles, or the members of the MVM-ERBE Ltd. are capable of avoiding the risks of cost-excess.

The time needed for the construction as stated in the EIAD is underestimated. The planned operational date for the new blocks is not in line with what has been hitherto communicated: operational dates do no correspond with the published dates of construction, credit uptake or the dates included in the EPC contract. The information in the study could be understood as if to suggest that the second block of the expansion will probably not be realized. It would be reasonable to modify the permit request and adjust it to the actual requirements.

The 60 years of lifespan that the EIAD works with is, for now, merely a theoretical assumption, not yet evidenced with empirical operational data. Economic evaluations regarding the 60-year-lifespan can thus only be seen as no more than a theoretical mathematical example.

The claim that the new PaksII nuclear power plant is exempt from the risks of using the prototype, is also not backed by evidence.

The electricity-production costs of the planned investment are underestimated as well; they also contradict values that were estimated in connection with the Hungarian project by both international and Hungarian expert organizations. According to the calculations of the International Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency the assumption about cheap nuclear energy is not correct, since its cost-level depends on multiple factors, primarily on the costs of financing; thus, compared to renewables it becomes less competent. The cost of electricity produced by the Paks expansion is significantly higher than the expected market cost-level; therefore, it is not market-compatible. The project’s market entry and the return of the investment is dubious or improbable without some kind of market entry assistance. Such assistance, however, can cause damage in the price contests, therefore, the European Commission decided that the aid construction of the government was against EU competition law, which, in turn, could lead the produced electricity to be squeezed out of the market because it is too expensive. This complex problem can bring about unexpected changes.

All of the above point to the fact that the preparation and the planning of the project is weak. Essential uncertainties and questions about risks remain open.

Conditions that are inevitable to the operation of the block are also missing: the means to system-regulation, reserve insurance and schedule balancing are not even referred to. In order for the planned facility to become a capacity that produces highly utilizable and cheap electricity, the conditions for system-regulation and effective operation should be planned.

The energy and electricity market environment used in the EIAD is outdated. The electricity need and the future needs also seem exaggerated in the current context.

It would be reasonable to improve the graphic capacity plan of the study, as it lost its timeliness and lacks the description of what can be expected after the implementation of the electricity producing capacity of the planned expansion, and which therefore barely has any valid content remaining.

The expected role of the import, as well as the calculations for the expected amount of import for both middle and long terms were also left out from the capacity plan of the EIAD. This is closely connected to the size of the necessary domestic producing capacity as well as the ideas on reducing the extent of energy dependence.

The implementation of the two new blocks will alter the production structure. The means necessary for realizing n-1 security requirements and for schedule-tracking will be changed substantially. The necessary changes should be handled in a complex manner – regarding reserve insurance, regulation, schedule tracking – and be modelled in the most cost effective way. It is misleading that the document handles additional investments necessary for the system separately from the planned investment, as this merely reduces the perceived costs of the investment, not the actual ones, as these extensions are only necessary because of the introduction of the new blocks. Separating them from the planned investment can result in the failure of implementing them, which can, in turn, cause cost-excesses and restraints in the electricity producing system as well as an additional increase in energy dependency.

The means of system-integration and system-adjustment need to ensure that the most optimal utilization, the highest cost-efficiency, and that the highest utilization of the nuclear capacity be possible. According to the EIAD, currently no one is in charge of the task of system-integration.

It is an inevitable condition of the two-block Paks expansion to balance system-loads as well as to increase minimum nighttime system loads (base loads). If this remains unaddressed, an approximate 5 TWh/year reduction in production can come about in the already operating plants, and an additional 2 TWh/ year reduction can come about in the new blocks of the expansion. The economic value of a 7 TWh/year reduction is so significant that there is no argument for ignoring it in the EIAD.

Minimizing or eliminating downward balancing makes intervention necessary in the period of small system loads. From the perspective of system load, significant and regulated amount of nighttime loads would be needed.
With the introduction of the new blocks, systematic power outage reserves, that is, the n-1-safety-reserve-capacities, will approximately be increased by 700 MWs, as the performance of the largest block of the system will be increased from 500 MWs to 1200 MWs. At the same time, the already existing 500 MWs of outage reserve capacity will reach the end of its lifespan. Measures have to be taken in order for the 1200 MW reserve to be accessible and for the costs to be covered. Cost recovery is the responsibility of MAVIR Ltd. as the system manager, regardless of the fact that the overcapacities are needed not because of system management or the operation of the transmission network, but because of the introduction of the new high-performance nuclear power plant blocks.

The PAKS1 cooling-water system was never in compliance with the n-1 safety requirements. The examples to be mentioned are the warm-water canal or the energy dissipater that can cause a complete system failure in the entire nuclear power plant. The reparation of the dissipater has been unresolved for years now. The new cooling-water system for PaksII described in the EIAD does most probably not comply with the n-1 safety requirements or the nuclear safety and protection requirements laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency. There is a lack of means to eliminate the consequences in case of abnormal system operation, as well as to prevent further escalations. There are no built-in protection devices.

The need for the establishment of n-1 security and the necessity of and possibility for the elimination of a single safety measure has skipped the attention of the authors of the documentation. With an adequate construction, the cooling of the new blocks of the expansion could provide an opportunity to modify single safety measures and to establish n-1 safety.

Based on the EIAD, it is without doubt that the review of the cooling concept is needed. Possible cooling alternatives were not assessed to their full extent in the EIAD. Neither does the document present the conditions that could substantiate a decision between fresh-water cooling or cooling tower solutions. The cost-effect analysis is substituted with a rudimentary SWOT table without numbers.

According to the EIAD only the open-system fresh-water cooling mechanism was examined, but even this needs to be improved on: the cooling of the new blocks should be developed with regard to the conditions of the given location and in a way that the conditions for cooling do not limit electricity production and that they do not cause hindrances to the neighboring area’s economic development (such as boating) during the planned lifespan of the power plant.

From the possible solutions of fresh-water cooling, the writers of the study chose the one corresponding with the alternative already used. They excluded the water extraction beside the mainstream of the Danube River with a false reason and the explanation of the decision shows ignorance. Developing a cooling system similar to that of the previous one is flawed for multiple reasons.

It would be preferable to learn from past mistakes instead of repeating them. Both the examples of Százhalombatta and Paks prove that the construction of the cool-water canal to function as an alluvial trap did not live up to expectations in river forks without flows. Neither the constant need for dredging, nor taking the risk of silting is necessarily justifiable. There are examples for other solutions even within country borders.

In order for the creation of an adequate cool-water canal, a near-two-meter deepening was proposed. Given the continuous operation of the current power plant blocks, the execution of deepening and widening the channels, as well as making paving constructions is highly problematic. The safety of ceaseless operation would make it necessary to find a solution for constructions independent of the operating facilities. The document does not contain tendencies regarding changes in the water level and bed-depth of the Danube River; neither does it convey data about water discharge. Therefore, the two-meter deepening of the cool-water canal is meaningless concerning the entire lifespan. The study does not contain any calculations or explanations about the extent of deepening or whether cooling-water supply is secured in all circumstances regarding the Danube River’s water flow.

The execution of the warm-water canal’s branching as well as its reconstruction during the operational phase is also questionable. The security of ceaseless operation makes it necessary to find a solution regardless of the facilities’ operation in this case as well. The amount of water discharge brought in through the energy dissipater is currently 100m3/sec; this would be 132m3/sec at the planned new recirculation point. The description of the means of this mechanism is also missing from the study. Another section of the study explains that the entire amount of water flow will be brought in through the new recirculation point. If the latter is true, all flow-models are wrong. Either the concept or the coordination is missing.

The study does not contain size-proportionate graphics or river-bed measures regarding warm-water recirculation. In the absence of these, there is no way of examining the water flow models in the case of cool-water extraction or warm-water recirculation. Therefore, the amount of recirculation of warm water cannot be properly estimated.

The idea of a hydropower plant co-constructed with an energy dissipater is a vocational paradox. Energy is either dissipated or utilized. The descriptions of the second lead-in point and the recuperating hydropower plant show signs of vocational incompetence. The contradicting statements of the study suggest that the project manager has never run even an elementary quality-assurance check.

The compliance with the limits of wildlife protection seems to have been of complete unimportance for the EIAD. The proposal on the establishment of a monitoring system to ensure compliance with heat load limits is also absent; there is a mere reference to information contained in the self-monitoring plan.
The water temperature cannot exceed 30 Celsius degrees at any point of the segment from the extraction point to the next 500 meters in the direction of the river-flow. The Directive of the European Parliament and the Council is stricter: the temperature cannot exceed 28 Celsius degrees at the edge of the mixing zone. In the meantime it is to be expected that requirements will become stricter and will place limits to the amount water extraction. According to the Directive, temperature limits can be exceed in 2% of the time. In order to see what possible damages this can cause to the aquatic life, it would be advisable to examine how aquatic organisms react to the conditions that temperature loads will create in the standard time phase concerned.

Following the implementation of the planned expansion, during the summer period, there is a theoretical possibility for becoming unable to keep water temperature limits in the small and middle water-flow periods. According to calculations, on a standard summer day the limit of 30 Celsius degrees cannot be kept within the reference segment.

The estimation of 1500m3/sec water discharge from the Danube, taken as a basis for warm-water transfusion, is not correct; it is too high. According to hydrological studies made for the expansion of the operational time of the Paks Power Plant, the small water discharges from the Danube are actually below 900 and 1000m3/sec. The mistaken selection of base data for modelling suggests that the adequate assessment of accessible data was not carried out. It is highly improbable that a 1500m3/sec water discharge from the Danube and a 33-Celsius-degree extraction-water would occur simultaneously. The modelling of warm-water transfusion should be done again, this time taking realistic values of water flow and water level as well as with the realistic distribution of water recirculation.

The descriptions of flow and heat load models contain redundant information to an unmanageable extent. This information pertains to the actual subject only on a theoretical level; its practical significance in terms of the operation and effects of the project is non-existent. The legality of use for boating/navigation data for the EIAD is also questionable.
It is important to notice that the study uses various 1D, 2D and 3D models for seemingly irrelevant reasons. What these have in common is that they are all based on some freely downloadable software. There is no complete 3D model for the examination of transfusion/water mixture in the EIAD. As the simplifications and approximations of these free softwares is not included in the study, the results of these models can be misleading.

The contradicting statements in the EIAD suggest that its authors did not develop a unified system of criteria to rate the effects.

As a solution for the possible excess of water temperature limits, the EIAD proposes the down-balancing or the shut-down of the blocks, clearly excluding all other possibilities. Both down-balancing and shutting down create a need for availability and auxiliary capacity in the electricity system. The conditions for the above were probably not assessed, thus the cost of insuring additional reserves cannot be estimated.

The effects of locating the extractions from the cool-water canal near the new point of warm-water recirculation should be examined as well as its functionality in the entire operating range. Non-permitted negative effects should be eliminated through technical means.

There is an urgent and inevitable need for expert revision and quality assurance! The greatest investment of the country would have deserved a documentation better prepared and researched than the one published.

I am almost sorry for János Lázár and his gang, as the entire pile of lies that they gathered over the past years falls right back onto them (okay, I admit I, too, helped to make that process easier). There is a new result to my perseverant efforts to pressure the European Commission: a couple of days ago they sent me 200 hundred pages of classified documents including internal notices, correspondence between the Commission and the Hungarian government, and the official inquiries of the Commission as well as the Hungarian responses. To read the full set of documents click here.  . Although significant parts of the document labelled Confidential – business secrets” have been concealed, it still contains very interesting issues and they also refute some of the popular, albeit misleading, sayings of the government. It is also interesting to see why certain pieces of information have been concealed or refused to be published.

 

I will try to summarize the most important pieces of information, but I have to start by apologizing that despite all my efforts for brevity I will be a bit too long, even though I will emphasize the nine most exciting questions of the document.

 

1. My previous information, which the Prime Minister’s Office belonging to János Lázár was unwilling to ascertain, is now proven to have been correct. Based on the sent materials we can see that contrary to what the government communicated earlier, we won’t be able to ship the spent fuel of PaksII back to Russia, which means that their storage will take place on the area of the power plant until the storage facility responsible for its disposal will be finished (probably not until after 2050). This is exciting, because the environmental impact assessment documentation (EIAD) for the permit of PaksII, currently in progress, obviously does not mention this temporary storage facility. The permit-request, therefore, does not pertain to the actual institution of facilities, but to a hypothetical construction to which additional elements will be built, although these cannot be granted a permit at the moment. We called attention to this aspect in our expert analysis on the EIAD.
2. All details pertaining to financing are concealed in the document, which in itself poses the question: how great the convincing power is of the conditions that are being kept secret so anxiously? What becomes clear anyway is that in case, for example, we do not draw the credit planned for next year (because, for example, the construction was not finished on time and so work financed from that credit could not be done), we will have to pay a 0.25% charge. This means that even if drawing a 10-billion-dollar credit calculating with a 5% error rate (the execution is almost always delayed by that much in Hungary), it would mean a 1.25 million dollar (300-350 million forints) extra cost. This is only one example, but given that almost every part pertaining to financial details is concealed, and what I found comes from the very little they did leave uncovered, it is not unrealistic to assume that the contract can be full of similar hidden expenses. (Update: the above mechanism is real; however, because of swift calculation a decimal point was missed: instead of 1.25 million dollars, the text was about 125 million dollars. Thus the conversion to forint was also flawed, for which I apologize. I do, however, stand by the rest of my statements).
3. There are serious safety issues as well. The internal notices of the European Commission call special attention to the fact that in Finland, the client Fennovoima requested additional, increased safety changes from Rosatom, beyond the Russian base construction. For example:

– internal and external risks, among others, in case of fire or flood

– for the separation of the control center and the facility

– for the construction of an independent primary pressure-release system

– for the possibility of a plane crash

– in case of incident management

– for the purpose of testing passive safety systems

 

What we don’t know, however, is whether Hungary has asked for the same modifications or will the cheaper solution suffice for us? Are the facilities that are being built in Belarus or St. Petersburg good enough, once they are part of the Russian circle of interest? I turned to János Lázár in this matter to clarify whether Hungary has asked for the same modifications as Finland.

 

1. There are fascinating details in the documents about utilization and schedule-tracking, Based on these I can safely say: PaksII is the greatest transformation artist the world has ever seen. To the question how the expenses of the investment will be returned, the answer is that, apart from compulsory maintenance, the new power plant will operate at full capacity – Attila Aszódi consistently talks about a 95% utilization. Only to find out that when it comes to system integration or the question of heat-loads for the Danube, the very same power plant in the very same time phase will operate in a schedule-tracking mode, of course, (that is according to the actual needs); the plant can also be shut down regularly in order to keep to the environmental limits. Please! Not only the Constitution can be hacked with a two-thirds majority, the rules of form-logic can also be overwritten.
2. The completely false modelling of the prospects for energy market environment is a recurring problem, as well as ignoring the problems that come with it. Last week already, I pointed out that the assumptions related to the growth of energy demand (1.3% growth by 2020) are the complete opposite of the truth. And yet, even the Hungarian documents that were sent to the Commission include this completely false assumption, consistently. The estimations on the expected price of electricity produced in the new power plants are also false; in addition, the analyses pertaining to the expected prices of the EU electricity market upon the integration of PaksII are also missing. The Commission, therefore, also asks the question: what will happen in case electricity prices stay below what’s expected and what is needed for the return of the investment? How will this be managed? Do you know what the government’s well-founded, scientific answer is? Ah, there will be no such thing! Many power plants will be outdated by then and thus electricity will certainly be quite expensive. The thorough consideration of what electricity-producing capacities could enter the EU market in the meantime and at what expected price they will produce that electricity – in competition with the electricity of PaksII – apparently exceeds the intellectual horizon of the government.
3. The Commission’s decision to consistently conceal all the information relating to earthquakes and the forecasts of extreme weather circumstances is completely unacceptable and incomprehensible. The qualification of the documents is based on protecting business secrets; the probability of natural disasters, their extent, or forecast scarcely falls under that category. Safety reasons also fail to explain such a decision. There is no apparent reason to conceal such information from the material, neither is it understandable why they did so, unless they did it upon the request of the Hungarian government (with whom they consulted in connection with the provision of data – as it turns out from the annex of the letter, which also explains that requests had been taken into account). And the Hungarian government does not want us to see something here.
4. There is obvious clarification on the fate of the Central Nuclear Financial Fund (KNPA), however. The government answered, on multiple occasions, with great certainty upon the inquiries of the Commission in this matter: according to them the expenses of the disassembly of the facility and the disposal of harmful waste will be covered by KNPA. This also means that if the government stays true to its intention of stealing the Fund, it will at the same time lose the EU’s approval for PaksII, because the Commission will only approve of and contribute to the construction of the plant, provided that the costs of waste management and disassembly are covered via the permanent financing of the KNPA.
5. There is one other very interesting problem connected to the corrosion of various equipment. The Commission asks whether the power plant will serve as base-load or operate in a schedule-tracking mode. The significance of this lies with the fact that according to previous experiences with pressurized water reactors similar to that of the Paks ones, in case of a schedule-tracking mode there were regular corrosion processes in the steam generators – or so the Commission says. They ask what the plans are to prevent such occurrences or to detect them in time. The Hungarian response is that although the plant will operate in a schedule-tracking mode (and here I would like to refer back to the stark contradiction with Attila Aszódi’s statements envisioning a 95% utilization), there won’t be any corrosions here or if so, we will discover it in time. This sounds extremely reassuring, especially from the perspective of the power plant in relation to which I revealed, earlier this year, that no more than two years ago the corrosion-proof Russia-manfuctared pipes in the circulation system of the spent fuel pools in block 3 have rotten so badly after 30 years that cooling liquid was leaking out of them through entire holes. As a result, 60.000 liters of radioactive borated water had leaked by the time they managed to even detect this – from none less than the fact that liquid was constantly disappearing from the spent fuel pool. That substance has been there somewhere under the plant ever since. Following this revelation, when it came to the supervision of the rest of the blocks by this „there-won’t-be-corrosion-or-if-so-we-will-discover-it” type of power plant, it was revealed that the same occurrence happened in four out of four blocks. Bingo! In addition to all of the above, the permit for the 20-year-expansion of the lifespan of Paks 1 block 1 was issued without either the power plant or the authority detecting these problems. So we can rest assured: these guys are very confident in knowing how to handle this.
6.  And the last issue: upon the Commission’s question on what will happen with the spent fuel elements, with whom will the ultimate responsibility lie, and who the final owner of waste will be, the Hungarian government confidently says – by the way, in accordance with EU law – that it will naturally belong to Hungary. Let me remind you of a minor fact here: in the end of July, 2014, Hungary shipped nuclear waste by train to Russia through the war-ridden Ukraine; these were the damaged fuel rods of the 2003 Paks accident. The purpose of transportation was recycling and final disposal – as I have finally managed to make the government officially state so. This could not have been possible according to EU or Hungarian laws – exactly because, according to EU law the final owner of nuclear waste is always the country where it was generated and the responsibility of final disposal cannot be transferred to another country (except for rare cases that cannot pertain to this type of shipment). Apparently, the Hungarian government was also very well aware of this when it attempted to request a permit for PaksII. Then they must also be aware of the fact that last year’s shipments of waste was against the law, regardless of their forever-changing, ridiculous and forced reasons to explain the opposite. I’m just saying: this case is also being examined by the Commission. And the last two weeks didn’t bring much joy to Paks on the Commission’s part.

 

As a conclusion, a last remark: the documents I received, even in the reduced form they were sent to me, pose a series of uncomfortable questions. All in all, it is incomprehensible and unacceptable, on the one hand, that several of the documents were refused to be released without any convincing explanation, and on the other hand, that parts were concealed from the sent material with the allusion to secrets which can hardly be explained by the mentioned reasons (protection of business secrets, protection of institutional decision-making processes, protection of personal data or the guarantee of nuclear safety). Therefore, I turned to the Commission with a letter again, requesting withheld documents and access to the concealed parts of the sent document.

 

This is where we stand now. What becomes clear from these 200 pages that there is reason for – unlawfully – classifying the Paks documents. Every newly published detail proves over and over again that the Paks expansion is even crazier, more harmful and more absurd than we have originally thought. We gradually find out that it will pollute the Danube, that there is no VAT included in the price, that we won’t be able to ship spent fuel back to Russia for recycling and that they will have to be kept in the vicinity of the power plants, that the modelling of the prospects for the market environment was forgotten, or that the government is all over the place with its lies about the utilization of the power plant.

 

I wouldn’t hire them to build even a shed at the back of my yard.