Announcement

Press conference on priority tasks of the nuclear power plant

The Information and Visitors Center hosted a press conference in which the invited jour-nalists were informed about the service life extension of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant and the experiences of Targeted Safety Review (TSR).

The presentation of István Hamvas, chief executive officer of Paks Nuclear Power Plant Ltd. began with the current technical status of the units built from 1982 to 1987. The present technic-al status and the planned measures enable an extension of 20 years to the service life of the plant that was originally designed to operate for 30 years. Paks Nuclear Power Plant Ltd submitted the documentation and application for the permit of the service life extension of Unit 1 to the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority’s Nuclear Safety Directorate on 5 December 2011.

The CEO reviewed the more than a decade long process leading to the submittal of the applica-tion for permit. One of the most important step was the resolution of the Hungarian Parliament on 21 November 2005 that was passed with an overwhelming majority. The resolution included a theoretical approval of service life extension of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. Other important steps included the attainment of the environmental permit (25 October 2006) and the submittal of the service life extension program to the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority (November 2008). The authority ordered the execution of the program in the middle of 2009. The prepara-tion process of Unit 1 ended with the submittal of the continued operation permit. This will have to be repeated with all further units operating in the power plant, in the order of their original installation.

Then István Hamvas provided an overview about the executed safety enhancement measures and as a result of that –at present – the level of safety at the Paks nuclear power plant is conve-nient to same aged western power plants. This is also evidenced by investigations of national and international organizations.
Moving on to the topic of TSR, the CEO explained: With its continuous development of safety increasing measures, Paks NPP Ltd. has already fulfilled requirements needed to prove com-pliance with TSR.
Statements of the report met our expectations, because the units of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant fulfill all requirements of the Hungarian authorities and international standards (including criteria of protection from possible internal and external impacts). Against the extraordinary small probability but significantly more harmful effects further technical solutions are able to increase the reserves for the enhancement of the immunity of the Paks nuclear power plant. These corrective actions will be implemented in two phases, until the end of 2015 and 2018.
Then the chief executive officer of Paks NPP Ltd. answered questions from the representative of the media. Géza Pekárik, technical manager, József Elter head of department and István Mittler manager of communications were also participated on the event.