Rosatom expecting to receive principal license for construction of Paks-2 NPP in coming months
YEKATERINBURG. Aug 3 (Interfax) - The Rosatom state corporation expects to receive the principal license to build the Paks-2 nuclear power plant in Hungary in the coming months, Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev told reporters in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday.
"For Paks-2, we expect to receive the main license in the next few months. It is important to understand that it is of course the Hungarian regulator and the Hungarian government that have the final say in this decision," he said.
"In order to maintain the momentum of construction and to act within the contractual terms, of course, we would very much like to have this license issued in the coming months," Likhachev said.
International equipment suppliers have given assurances that they would continue collaborating with the Paks II nuclear power plant project in Hungary, as international sanctions imposed against Russia do not affect the nuclear industry, Janos Suli, a Hungarian minister without a portfolio in charge of the project, was quoted as saying in a press release posted on the Paks 2 website in April.
The Paks-2 company has received construction licenses for more than half of construction and installation work. The new documents will be issued soon, allowing the project to proceed to the second stage, Suli said.
Hungary is still waiting for a license to build the plant. In early February, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the country expects the license to be issued as soon as possible, which would allow it to proceed with construction.
At the moment, the only NPP in Hungary, Paks, built under a Soviet project, has four power units with VVER-440 type reactors with a total capacity of about 2 GW. In 2009, the Hungarian Parliament approved the construction of two new power units of this NPP, but the construction period was affected by the protracted proceedings of the European Commission.
The cost of the project is about 12.5 billion euros; Russia's Rosatom state corporation signed contracts for the completion of the nuclear power plant in December 2014. In March of the same year, Russia and Hungary signed an agreement on a long-term loan of up to 10 billion euros.