Hungary and Slovakia consider cutting electricity supply to Ukraine if Kyiv continues blocking Russian oil supplies | #Hungary and #Slovakia could be headed to a major "soft war" against Ukraine involving energy | August 2, 2024:

"Roughly 40 percent of Ukraine’s electricity imports pass through the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, which means Hungary is not entirely powerless in the face of a Ukrainian blockade on oil supplies. In fact, Hungary may be forced to cut electricity to its neighbor if push comes to shove.

Olivér Hortay, head of Századvég’s climate and energy policy department, noted that Ukraine’s biggest energy problem is the electricity system. Since the start of the war, the country has lost three-quarters of its own electricity generation capacity, leading to Ukrainians having to deal with prolonged blackouts and cuts to production due to a lack of electricity. To deal with Ukraine’s faltering electricity network, the country has been importing energy from neighboring countries."

France shuts down two nuclear reactors over fire at Chinon NPP — authority

Two reactors have been shut down after a fire broke out at the Chinon nuclear power plant (NPP) in western France, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said in a statement on its website.

A transformer of Reactor 3 caught fire in a non-nuclear sector of the NPP in the early hours of Saturday.

"The loss of main external electrical power to Reactor 3, following this fire, resulted in the automatic shutdown of the reactor," the statement said.

It was reported that after the fire had been extinguished, Reactor 4, which shares a water collection system with Reactor 3, was also temporarily shut down to avoid water leaks into the environment.

The Chinon NPP has four operating reactors, each with a capacity of 900 MWe, and its other three were shut down between 1973 and 1990. The operating water-water reactors were built between 1982 and 1987. In 2023, the Chinon NPP generated 17.24 TWh of electricity, which is equivalent to 5.4% of France’s total nuclear power production.