The sinking of two eighty-metre barges near Paks to raise the water level of the Danube is set to begin on Saturday at dawn, the prime minister announced on Friday evening at the scene via his Facebook page.

Speaking from one of the barges to be sunk, from the closed water area of the Paks nuclear power plant, in the company of specialists and representatives of the relevant authorities, Péter Magyar said that a trial run of the pumps was being carried out with the help of industrial divers. He reported that work was proceeding on schedule; the two barges had been turned alongside each other and secured with a five-tonne anchor each, after which their angles would still be adjusted.

He reported that a survey vessel would arrive from Baja at 6 a.m. to measure all the necessary parameters, and that the sinking would proceed depending on the data.

The prime minister said that the current water level of the Danube at Paks stands at minus 122 centimetres; at minus 132 centimetres — expected by Sunday — one of the two turbines currently operating at the Paks nuclear power plant would have to be shut down, something they would like to avoid. He added that at minus 140 centimetres, operations would have to be halted entirely. According to forecasts, they would be “right at the threshold”: specialists are now predicting minus 139 to minus 140 centimetres around Tuesday if no human intervention takes place, he noted.

He also mentioned that many offers of assistance had been received; there is currently a shortage of steel-flatbed semi-trailer trucks, which are needed to transport the stone blocks required for the construction of the bottom sill.

Péter Magyar emphasized that they are working to make the intervention significantly more successful than the one in Romania. According to him, the similar intervention there had to be carried out very suddenly — “it was a rapid sinking, at a bad angle” — without thorough modelling and without controlled execution.

“Here, everything is being done in a scheduled and pre-modelled manner in order to achieve the greatest possible impact with the least possible risk during the sinking. Fortunately, we have more time — the Danube has given us one or two days of preparation time,” he added.

He reported that a press conference will be held on Saturday at 10 a.m. to provide information on the defence works, and that István Kapitány, Minister of Economy and Energy, Bálint Ruff, Head of the Prime Minister’s Office, and Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, Minister of Defence, will all be present.

Péter Magyar expressed his gratitude for the work carried out by the specialists so far, and asked local residents not to come to the site on Saturday, as the closures would prevent them from getting close to the works anyway.

Artificial intelligence was used for the translation of parts of the original Hungarian text.