Paks has refused to accept waste received from processing its spent fuel in Russia. A spokesman for Paks said: "We won't take the nuclear waste, even if Russia makes us. We simply can't store it." In 1997, Hungary asked the Atomic Energy Ministry of the Russian Federation to accept 3550 containers of spent nuclear fuel, under the condition that the nuclear waste was returned to Hungary. Even though, according to Russian law, nuclear waste is to be returned to the country the fuel came from, the Atomic Ministry of Russia, the State Ecological Committee and the State Atomic Energy Committee agreed to accept the fuel from Hungary in July 1997.
