ANKARA, July 1. /TASS/. Hungary and Russia expect construction of Paks 2 nuclear power plant (NPP) facilities will begin in 2023, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto told reporters on Friday.

"According to our plans, construction of Paks NPP will begin by the end of next October," the Minister said after the meeting with CEO of Russia’s Rosatom Aleksey Likhachev. Preparation of the construction site for two nuclear reactors and the plant building continues now, Szijjarto noted.

The second stage of Paks 2 nuclear power plant construction will start in September 2022, the Minister said.

"If everything evolves in accordance with the today’s agreement, it is quite real that investments in the Paks NPP will move to the second construction phase," Szijjarto noted.

If the project is implemented and two new nuclear power reactors appear at Paks NPP, the plant capacity will grow from 2,000 MW to 4,400 MW. "Hungary is making a major step towards self-support in the electric power sphere and this will provide it with the significant advantage in the current situation, when prices on the international energy market are growing at absolutely unperceivable rates," the Minister added.