US power company Westinghouse is reportedly in talks with the Slovak government to develop a new type of electricity storage site near the Gabčíkovo hydroelectric power plant (HPP) on the Danube river.

“We have the best starting points where this can be carried out, because we have existing real estate near Gabčíkovo. This means we know how to do it for much lower costs,” Slovak Minister of Environment, Tomáš Taraba, a nominee of ultranationalist SNS party, was quoted as saying by state broadcaster STVR.

STVR highlighted in its coverage that the site would be a new type of storage, where Westinghouse would store electricity in the form of heat, a technology that was already implemented in Finland.

“It is ecologically less demanding, because it is not a chemical process. It is a heat process, normally recycled materials are used there,” CEO of Westinghouse Czech Republic, Petr Brzezina, was quoted as saying by STVR.

The broadcaster also noted that the electricity storage method is criticised by environmentalists, who argue that the system will be powered by nuclear energy, while energy analysts point out that the system loses a lot of energy in the storage process.

“We are talking about approximately 60- 65% of electricity energy, which we can renew from this heat and this cold. This means that we still have a loss of 35% of electric energy, which literally disappears in this process,” Andrej Lednár, CEO of the energy consulting company Prvá energetická, told STVR.

Lednár also said that, by contrast, battery storage sites keep up to 90% of electricity, and that heat storage sites can last almost 60 years.

The left-right cabinet of Slovak populist Prime Minister Robert Fico has drafted an agreement between the US and the Slovak government on cooperation in the field of nuclear energy after Fico announced plans to launch a new nuclear tender in 2027, as bne IntelliNews reported last November.

The new nuclear reactor would be located at the existing Jaslovské Bohunice nuclear power plant (NPP) site, which already has two reactors, and should cost between €13bn-15bn, according to the latest reports.

Earlier this month, the country’s Minister of Economy, Denisa Saková, confirmed on her Facebook on August 6 that the European Commission “did not raise objections to the agreement between Slovakia and the USA in the nuclear energy”, which the EC has been reviewing.

As bne IntelliNews covered last month, Fico was reportedly invited to visit the White House to sign a nuclear deal, according to Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi.  

The Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros HPP is also subject to a long-standing dispute between Hungary and Slovakia, which the Fico and the Hungarian Viktor Orbán governments are supposed to be working on to bring to an end.

Slovak opposition and the country’s energy analysts have voiced criticism that Fico’s efforts to end the dispute would secure favourable terms and cheap energy for Hungary.   

In an interview with the leading daily DennikN, the Slovak government envoy, Metod Špaček, who represented Slovakia in the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros dispute since 2005, said that agreement on cheap energy imports to Hungary from Gabčíkovo could help Orbán ahead of the national elections in Hungary scheduled for April next year.

“It is one of the most complex disputes which the Slovak Republic has ever had, and its importance far surpasses the significance of Slovakia and Hungary, Špaček said of the dispute for DennikN.  

The agreement over the construction and operations of the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Hydroelectric Power Plant System was signed by former Czechoslovakia and Hungary, then both socialist Soviet bloc countries, in 1977, but Hungary unilaterally stepped down from the agreement in 1989 when most of the works on the Slovak side were completed.

The International Court in the Hague upheld the agreement in 1997 and Slovakia’s succession rights to the agreement.

Fico’s Smer party made a sharp shift into the national conservative waters while in opposition in 2020-2023, and after returning to power in 2023, Fico openly sought an alliance with Viktor Orbán, heralding a new era in the Slovak-Hungarian relations, which in the past were marked by strong anti-Hungarian Slovak nationalism, including in the 1990’s, when the Slovak strongman Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar was in power.

Fico and Orban became unlikely bedfellows also because they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Fico still declares himself a socialist (though his Smer party has been suspended from the PES European grouping because of his coalition with the far-right SNS party and his stance on the Ukraine war), while Orban sees himself as the leader of Europe’s radical right.