Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the arrival of a melt trap indicates "another milestone" in the country's nuclear plant upgrade now underway at Paks, in southern Hungary.
The massive, new equipment, 15 metres high, 11 metres in diameter and weighing over 730 tonnes, was produced in Russia, Minister Szijjártó said, adding that it would be placed directly below the reactor to catch spilt liquid in an emergency. The minister said the production process in Russia had been monitored by Hungarian experts and representatives of the Hungarian Atomic Energy Office “to ensure that the best and most secure equipment is completed”. The Hungarian side approved the melt trap’s completion on March 29, he said, but noted that shipping had taken a long time. “An Austrian company organised shipping, that took 42 days … shipping across the Black Sea and along the River Danube involved reloading the melt trap and its accessories several times,” he said. He said construction was going ahead “full steam” with 900 people working at the site, but added that at peak times of the project, the headcount could reach 8,000-10,000 people. He said 21,000 posts out of a planned 76,000 to stabilise the soil had been sunk, while the soil under the new fifth block was 86% complete.