At the AEM-Spetsstal facility in St Petersburg, under Rosatom’s Machine-Building Division, workers have begun forging approximately 600 tonnes of blanks. These will form the reactor vessel’s rings and bottom, shaped under 12,000 tonnes of pressure. Once formed, the components will move to another section of the plant for further processing. The completed vessel will weigh nearly 330 tonnes, stand over 11 meters tall, measure 4.5 meters in diameter, and have a maximum wall thickness of 285 millimeters.
Igor Kotov, head of Rosatom’s Machine-Building Division, stated: “We have started work on manufacturing the ‘heart’ of the nuclear power plant - a generation III+ reactor - for another power unit in Hungary. Russian metallurgists and machine builders have reached high rates of equipment production for the Paks II NPP.” He noted that production for units 5 and 6 is underway, with plans to produce additional equipment like steam generators and safety system tanks across facilities in Moscow, Podolsk, St Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, and Volgodonsk.
Vitaly Polyanin, Vice President of ASE JSC and Director of the Paks NPP Construction Project, said: “The implementation of the Paks II NPP project is on schedule. This is also evidenced by the fact that the production of long-cycle equipment - the reactor vessel of power unit 6 - began a year after a similar stage of production of the reactor vessel for unit 5 of the Paks NPP.”
In parallel, production of turbine components for unit 5 has started at Arabelle Solutions in Belfort, France. Hungary’s Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó remarked: “The Paks II project is the largest and most advanced nuclear project in the European Union. Its success is of critical importance for the long-term security of domestic energy supply.”
Located 100 kilometers south of Budapest, the existing Paks plant operates four VVER-440 reactors, operational since 1982-1987. The Paks II project, agreed upon in 2014 with Russia, involves constructing two VVER-1200 reactors, supported by a Russian loan of up to EUR10.0 billion (USD10.5 billion) covering 80% of costs. The construction license was granted in August 2022, with a timeline set in 2023 aiming for grid connection in the early 2030s.
This development reflects steady advancement in expanding Hungary’s nuclear energy capacity with international collaboration.
