Hungary, EU Agree on Fuel Shipments for Planned Nuclear Plant

Hungary said on Monday it had secured the approval of the European Commission's nuclear fuel agency Euratom for a fuel supply agreement between Budapest and Moscow for a planned expansion of the Hungary's sole nuclear power plant.

"The European Commission signed a milestone of a document today," Janos Lazar, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, told reporters. "In our view all obstacles to the capacity preservation work have been essentially removed."

Hungary's current nuclear power blocks are expected to run until the 2030s, and the new units would come online in the 2020s.

The European Commission and Hungary began talks last month over the fuel supply elements of Hungarian-Russian nuclear plant expansion deal, which stipulated a 20-year monopoly for Russia to supply fuel for the plant.

Reporting by Marton Dunai and Sandor Peto