Eastern Europe's Love Affair With Nuclear Is Hitting the Rocks

[jpak]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-28/eastern-europe-s-love-affair-with-nuclear-is-hitting-the-rocks

Zoltan Gorog is ready for the Russian invasion. The real estate agent in the Hungarian town of Paks has added Cyrillic to the blue and white sign hanging above his offices. He’s set up empty desks for when he needs to expand to cope with the surge in business.

Rather than a flood of people, though, there’s barely a trickle. Five years after Hungary’s government signed an agreement with nuclear energy company Rosatom Corp. to build two new reactors at the aging plant near the town, there’s still no start date for the bulk of the work.

“We had to realize it’s not as simple to construct a nuclear plant as, say, a car plant,” said Gorog, who plans to be the go-to guy for settling the engineers, metal workers, electricians and physicists needed to complete the job. “It’s hard to imagine the changes ahead,” he said, as he pecked at his laptop to show off available apartments – unaffordable for most locals, but fitted out to accommodate richer Russian guests.

While wealthier countries such as Germany and France balk at adding facilities because of the cost and environmental risks, in former communist Europe the problem is that enthusiasm for nuclear isn’t matched by the ability to make projects happen. Across the region, where the Soviet Union fit out most of the reactors still in use today, authorities are squeezed by time and money.

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