Rosatom’s chief negotiates in Hungary

The first concrete foundation piles for the Paks nuclear power plant expansion will be set into the ground by the end of the year, Péter Szijjártó said on Tuesday.

A ministry statement quoted the foreign minister as saying at a joint press conference with Alexei Likhachev, head of the Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom, that an equally important milestone is the completion of the first melt trap produced in Russia.

The 700-tonne melt trap is scheduled to be delivered in the autumn, while production of the reactor tank will start in April, he said.

Work on soil consolidation across 17 hectares is underway, with 8,000 out of 75,000 piles already in place. A German company is carrying out this work, which is scheduled to be completed by next summer.

Szijjártó said the project was “progressing at a good steady pace,” and it was achievable for the two new blocks to be hooked up to the grid by the start of the next decade, he said.

The minister added that the Paks expansion was “a real international” project involving German, French, Austrian, Swedish, and American subcontractors.

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