In a roundtable on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, the foreign minister said nuclear energy has become an issue of sovereignty and national security.
Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the current energy crises had not only been caused by the war in Ukraine and the EU’s sanctions, adding that the community had become “much too lazy”, neglecting crucial investments and infrastructure developments, focusing on spot markets rather than on long-term purchase agreements. Minister Szijjártó insisted that green energy had also been shrouded in ideology, and noted a strong anti-nuclear position, whose supporters referred to such nuclear disasters as Chernobyl and Fukushima. “But this is like giving up cars because of a road accident,” he said.