The majority of Hungarians were excluded from the scoping phase of Paks Nuclear Power Plant’s lifetime extension procedure

According to the environmental authority, the continued operation of the Paks NPP could affect most of Europe, but only a few municipalities in Hungary.

The lifetime of Paks NPP has already been extended by 20 years, and now it would be prolonged by another 20 years, as it was decided by the Hungarian Parliament in December 2022. The only example of such a long lifetime in Europe is the Finnish Loviisa nuclear power plant.

The preparatory phase of the mandatory environmental impact assessment procedure for the lifetime extension started at the end of September, without much publicity. The preliminary consultation was launched by the competent green authority, the Baranya County Government Office, at the request of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant.

During the scoping phase of the environmental impact assessment procedure, the authority determines the key issues which will have to be assessed later in the Environmental Impact Assessment report, taking into account the requirements of all affected parties. Stakeholders in Hungary had until the end of October to comment on the document submitted by the nuclear power plant.

Only 15 towns affected in Hungary, the Paks NPP and the authority say

The preparatory consultation document submitted by the Paks NPP claims that environmental impacts during normal operation or in the event of design basis accidents could only affect the 10 km radius around the plant. Therefore, in their view, only the population living in this area will be affected by the continued operation of the nuclear power plant.

As the Government Office’s announcement shows, the authority has accepted this argument, thus only people living in the ’impact area’ were allowed to comment in the preliminary consultation. However, at the same time, the Authority’s notice informs the relevant ministry that ‘significant transboundary environmental effects are likely to arise from the proposed lifetime extension’.

Thus, according to the Hungarian environmental authority, the effects of the operation of the nuclear power plant may also occur outside Hungary – but within Hungary only within a 10-kilometre radius around the plant.

We have asked the Baranya County Government Office how this is possible, and also whether only the same population will be allowed to participate in the environmental impact assessment procedure. We had not received a reply from the authority by the time of publication of our article.

International law applies as well

The relevant EU Directive and the Espoo Convention consider nuclear power plants as installations with potentially significant transboundary environmental impacts. Therefore, it is mandatory to notify all countries likely affected by these impacts and also, irrespective of the notification, participation should be open to any country that so requests.

As the Ministry of Energy informed Atlatszo, the notification had been sent, but they did not provide further details. However, we found the notification on the Romanian Ministry of Environment’s website.

According to the letter, the citizens of 31 countries, from Serbia to Sweden, from Ukraine to Portugal, roughly 570 million people, were given the opportunity to comment on the documentation submitted by the Paks nuclear power plant in the preliminary consultation. In Hungary, by contrast, only 53,000 residents of the 15 towns identified as affected were able to do so.

Notification sent by the Hungarian Ministry of Energy based on the Espoo Convention and the EU Directive. Source: the Romanian Ministry.of Environment’s website.

We also asked the Ministry of Energy why certain countries, such as Russia, Belarus or Turkey, have not been notified, although some of them are closer to Paks than some of the notified countries. At the time of writing, we had not received an answer to this question.

Radioactive contamination can travel far in the event of a major accident

According to the preliminary consultation document prepared by the Paks nuclear power plant, ‘transboundary impacts can only be envisaged in exceptional cases’.

In the event of a major accident, the radioactive contamination released from the Paks NPP is illustrated by the dispersion models prepared by the BOKU (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences) in Vienna. The model takes into account daily weather data for the year 1995, modelling the impact of a total of 2800 weather events.

Radioactive contamination dispersion models. Source: flexrisk.boku.ac.at

For example, if a severe accident occurred at the Paks nuclear power plant on a day like March 16, 1995, the radioactive contamination would spread eastwards. But in the weather conditions of 13 August 1995, the radioactive fallout from the accident would affect the whole of Europe. (The redder the colour on the map, the stronger the radioactivity.)

The maps above show the accumulation of caesium-137, which is absorbed by the soil due to atmospheric dispersion of radioactivity, mainly through precipitation. The half-life of caesium-137 is 30 years, i.e. it is present in the soil for decades. The model examines the impact of a very severe, Chernobyl level accident (INES scale 7).

Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope produced by the nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium. It is one of the most problematic of the radioactive isotopes because it spreads very quickly, so once it is released into the environment it is very difficult to manage. It is therefore one of the most important effects that is recorded in case of nuclear accidents. Like all radioactive material, caesium-137 can cause cancer or death, depending on the dose. Caesium-137 has been present in the environment only since the use of nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons, and has not been present in significant quantities on Earth for the 1.7 billion years before that.

Written and translated by Orsolya Fülöp, Hungarian version. Cover photo edited by Atlatszo, using Paks NPP’s photo published on their official website.