Following the first meeting in Washington in 2010 and in Seoul 2012, the third Nuclear Security Summit was held in The Hague on 24-25 March 2014. This is the second time that Hungary has participated in a Nuclear Security Summit.
The Hague Summit is being attended by 53 Heads of State and Government, as well as the leaders of the UN, the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Interpol. The Hungarian delegation was led by Foreign Minister János Martonyi, who was be accompanied by Szabolcs Takács, the Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hungary’s participation is closely in line with our foreign policy strategy priority: the policy of a pronounced opening towards global issues, and it also coincides with our national security strategy.
For the first time in its history, the IAEA organised a ministerial level Nuclear Security Conference in Vienna in July of last year, with the primary objective of reiterating the central role and the responsibility of the Agency in the professional coordination of international nuclear security cooperation. The fact that Foreign Minister János Martonyi was asked to chair the conference testifies to the international recognition of Hungary within the field of nuclear security.
Following the major IAEA conference, the biannual Security Summit proved to be indispensable for the political coordination of nuclear security. The main objective of the Summit in The Hague was to summarize the achievements of the period since the Washington Summit and to define the further directions of the process.
During the past two years Hungary has achieved several results in fulfilling its undertakings declared at the Security Summits. In November 2013, the last highly enriched fuel transport departed from Hungary within the framework of an international project. As a result of the work, which has been underway since 2008, hazardous spent and unused reactor fuel containing highly enriched uranium was transported back to Russia. From 2010 onwards, the Research Reactor in Budapest will be gradually switching to the use of low enriched uranium fuel that constitutes a lower risk from the perspective of nuclear weapon manufacturing.
In the spring of 2013, the International Physical Protection Advisory Service of the IAEA arrived in Hungary at the request of the Hungarian Government for a peer review mission. The purpose of the IPPAS mission was to study the physical protection of nuclear and other radioactive materials and associated facilities and activities. A total of 37 countries from around the world have requested such a security review, and Hungary was among the first to do so in the nineties. With the IPPAS mission last year, our country is the first in the world to have undergone such an IAEA review twice with excellent results.
The Cooperation Agreement signed by the IAEA and the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority in line with our undertakings in Seoul has foreseen several regional workshops and trainings for 2014 in Hungary. These allow us to put our nuclear security training potential at the service of the international community.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)