According to the ministry's announcement, Péter Szijjártó said in the press conference with Alexey Likhachev, head of the Russian nuclear power company Rosatom, that the current schedule would allow the „first concrete”, which is a crucial milestone, to be poured by the end of this year, but a similar major milestone would also be the production of the two large nuclear equipment, the core-catcher and the reactor pressure vessel. In this context, he welcomed the fact that the former’s production has been completed in Russia and will be delivered this autumn. This will be no small feat, as it weighs more than 700 tonnes, the equivalent of roughly fifteen Airbus A320 passenger aircrafts. The other critical, long lead item is the reactor vessel itself, production of which will start in April – he said.

The minister also highlighted that soil consolidation works are currently underway on an area of 17 hectares, which requires the drilling of 75000 piles, of which 8000 have already been drilled. He emphasized that this work was being carried out by a German company and should be completed by next year's summer. – There will be about one and a half million meters of boreholes in the ground. If this work were done on the planet Pluto, rather than on Earth, we could reach the core of Pluto from its surface with this much drilling, just to get a sense of the scale – he said.

– We can still keep to our schedule to connect the two new units to the grid by the beginning of the next decade – the minister said, adding that the Paks project is an international project, as in addition to the Russian Cntractor, there are also German, French, Austrian, Swedish and American participants in the subcontractor chain.

– Work on the investment on the Paks site is progressing steadily, and there is no obstacle to reaching the first concrete by the end of this year and connecting the two new units to the Hungarian electrical grid at the beginning of the next decade – he summarized.