Russia aims to monopolise Europe’s nuclear industry?

Russia muscles into European nuclear industry, Global Post 23 Jan 14 A new deal with Hungary is set to boost Moscow’s influence as its grip on oil and gas wanes.BERLIN, Germany — A leading Hungarian official has said an agreement last week to give Russia a foothold in his country’s nuclear future is Budapest’s best deal in 40 years.

Hungary granted Russia’s state energy company Rosatom a $14-billion contractto double the capacity of the country’s sole nuclear power plant, a 2000-megawatt reactor in the Danube River city of Paks.

The funds would be offered as a 30-year loan package to be extended at below-market rates.

“These new reactors will surely enhance Hungary’s energy independence and security,” Russian President VladimirPutin told reporters.

But one person’s bargain is another’s Faustian deal — in this case at least. Critics say the sweetheart deal may as well have been written by Mephistopheles, the demon of German folklore.

They say the project was never tendered for competitive bids despite an earlier expression of interest from the French energy company Areva. Skeptics worry it represents an effort by Putin to add nuclear energy to the oil and gas monopoly he’s used so effectively to cement Russia’s influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

“What are Hungarians to make of the fact that Prime Minister Viktor Orban has committed them to invest [billions] building two new nuclear reactors without consulting his own cabinet let alone parliament, industry experts, or the Hungarian people?” asked a pointed editorial in the English-language Budapest Beacon…..

The European Commission’s decision about the agreement’s compliance could have far-reaching implications.

In 2012, allegations of corruption surrounded the Russian bid to expand the Czech Republic’s Temelin nuclear reactor due to the involvement of a Czech firm under investigation for insider trading and breach of trust in connection with previous deals. Now it looks doubtful that project will go forward at all, according to Czech media.

Similarly, a Russian project to build a 2000-MW nuclear plant in Belene, Bulgaria, was excoriated as “a corrupt and completely illegitimate business project, aimed at producing abundant and expensive electricity in a country with excess capacity in a region of declining electricity demand,” in the words of Ognyan Minchev, a research fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Balkan Trust for Democracy. The Bulgarian parliament voted to scrap plans for the reactor in February last year following a protracted debate over its environmental impact and a new investigation into the projected costs……http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140123/russia-nuclear-deal-hungary-power-influence