YOUR RELIABLE PARTNER FOR COOLING SOLUTIONS
2026
mvmegi.com
linkedin/mvm-egi
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More than 100 subsidiaries across 23 countries1
MVM EGI Global supply track record
Global HQ Budapest
China HQ Beijing
Factory Wuqing
MVM GROUP IN NUMBERS
ABOUT MVM GROUP & MVM EGI
Owner: MVM Group (100% Hungarian state owned)
Founded in 1948 as EGI
GEA Group 1992-2014, ENEXIO 2014-2020
Profile: Globally active cooling system provider
Consultancy, design, engineering, delivery, A&S
Manufacturing: Fully owned factory in Wuqing, CN
Headcount (FTE): 124 - Headquarters: Budapest, Hungary
MVM EGI
2nd
134 TWh
of natural gas sold per year
19,000+
employees
ca. 11
million customers
largest company in Hungary by sales
6 th
largest company in CEE by
sales
39 TWh
of electricity sold per year
5,079
bn HUF net sales revenue
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2026: DROUGHT IN EUROPE
The problem is water availability. Most conventional cooling systems were designed for river water. However, summer river levels are often too low or the river temperature is too high, and the number of affected sites keeps growing.
Romania
The Danube fell so low that the navy used controlled explosions on the riverbed to push water toward Cernavodă. Both units were disconnected from the grid. Around one fifth of Romania's generating capacity was unavailable at the peak of the heatwave.
France
Plants on the Seine, the Rhône and the Garonne cut output, because the water they returned to the river was too warm.
Switzerland
Beznau was taken off line for several weeks when Aare temperatures exceeded the discharge limit.
Hungary
Paks I. reduced output and came close to a full shutdown, the most severe cooling-related restriction in its operating history.
These are only a few examples. Water scarcity is a pattern now visible across Europe and increasingly worldwide.
Europe has been through its most severe drought in at least 500 years, and the pattern has continued since, with hot and dry conditions fueling wildfires, reducing crop yields and impacting electricity generation.
Not a heatwave.
A pattern.
2003 • 2018 • 2019 • 2022 • 2023 • 2026 (three times in one summer)
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WHAT A NUCLEAR PLANT NEEDS FROM ITS COOLING
Every thermal plant needs cooling water. However, what a nuclear plant needs from that water goes well beyond thermal performance.
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SAFETY MARGIN
Cooling availability is a licensing condition, not an operating preference. The heat sink has to be there at all times, not only when the river allows it.
02
CONTINUOUS OPERATION
Nuclear units are built for base load. Output reduced in August is not recovered in October: those megawatt-hours are lost for good.
03
PREDICTABILITY
A 60-year asset needs a cooling assumption that still holds in 60 years. The hydrological record of the last decade no longer supports the old one.
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GRID COMMITMENT
A nuclear unit is the block the system plans around. When it derates, the replacement is gas, at the highest price of the year.
A NUCLEAR SHUTDOWN IS NOT COMPARABLE
A nuclear unit is not dispatched like a gas or coal plant. It is built to run continuously, and coming back on line is a licensed procedure with its own timetable, not an operational decision.
The loss is therefore never only the megawatt-hours. It is base-load capacity the system had already counted on, withdrawn at the moment demand peaks.
This is not only a question of output. Water availability is a safety margin, and it can no longer be taken for granted.
Cooling is not an auxiliary system. It is a condition of availability.
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THREE WATER SITUATIONS. THREE ANSWERS.
There is no single right answer to cooling. There is a right answer for each site.
SOME WATER AVAILABLE
(EVERY CUBIC METRE MONITORED)
DUKOVANY
HYBRID COOLING TOWER
A combined dry-wet system. The main structure is a dry tower with Forgó heat exchangers and with a wet section built directly in the tower.
The dry section significantly cuts water consumption and delivers a permanent reduction compared with a conventional wet tower, without compromising the thermal performance a large reactor requires on the hottest day of the year.
Dukovany is the typical Central European case.
WATER AVAILABLE
(BUT NO LONGER ON THE SAME TERMS)
PAKS I & PAKS II
CLOSED-LOOP WET SYSTEM
Paks I: the Danube warms every summer and and in 2026, for the first time, the available flow was also insufficient.
Paks II is still a future project, currently designed around once-through river cooling. The system already contracted to MVM EGI, cools the return water, but it operates alongside once-through cooling.
We believe a closed-loop wet system is the right answer for both plants: for Paks I as it is today, and for Paks II while it is still being designed.
A closed loop is the right answer for both plants: using far less water than once-through ever can.
NO WATER AVAILABLE
UZBEKISTAN
FULLY DRY COOLING
A new nuclear plant now being planned in Uzbekistan sits on a site where river cooling is not available.
Our proposal: a closed circuit with no evaporation and no water consumption during operation.
The same principle Heller and Forgó patented seventy years ago.
Proven in service: Bilibino, the world's only dry-cooled nuclear plant, operated on MVM EGI technology for 50+ years, until its shutdown in December 2025.
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ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY.
Self-sufficiency that depends on a river is not self-sufficiency.
It is a dependency — and 2026 showed what that dependency costs when the river fails.
This is a solved engineering problem. The technology exists, it is proven, and it has decades of operating history. No new development is required.
The difficulty is timing. Modern reactors have a design life of 60 years. The cooling decision made in the next few years must still work in the 2090s. Once the plant is built, the cooling system cannot be changed for the life of the licence.
For the projects being decided in Central Europe right now, there is still time to make this decision. In a few years, this will no longer be true.
This is not a new position for MVM EGI. Sustainability has been a priority at MVM EGI from the start. We are not raising a new topic today, we are reaffirming a long-standing commitment. What changed is the climate of the last few years. Recent years have simply made the case measurable.
MVM EGI
LESS WATER. MORE POWER.
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MÁTRA: DRY COOLING IN OPERATION SINCE 1969
A live reference. MVM EGI delivered natural-draft Heller® dry cooling to Mátra Power Plant in Visonta, Hungary. The towers are still in operation, and the same technology has now been selected again for a new unit on the same site.
1969–1972: Natural-draft Heller ® dry cooling delivered for the lignite units at Mátra Power Plant.
1998-2000: Flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) system was built into the cooling tower: an environmental retrofit the Heller ® towers made possible.
2006: Wet peak coolers were added for the hottest days.
2026–2029: Heller ® dry cooling for a new combined-cycle unit of more than 500 MW, on the same site.
WHAT A 57-YEAR REFERENCE PROVES
Long life. The towers were built for units commissioned in the late 1960s and have outlived several retrofits of the plant behind them.
Low maintenance. No water in operation. No fans and no cooling fill, and the dry towers consume no water while running, on a site in one of the driest regions of Hungary.
57 years later, on the same site, the same technology was selected again in 2026 for the new unit.
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CONTACT
MVM EGI Zrt.
www.mvmegi.com
E-mail: info@mvmegi.com
Tel.: +36 1 225 6100
Office: Irinyi József str. 4-20, Budapest, Hungary 1117
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