Turbine installed at Turkey's Akkuyu unit 1

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

The past year has seen all the main equipment installed in the reactor and preparations for pre-launch tests with dummy nuclear fuel are under way.  Last month concreting of the outer containment dome was completed.

Alparslan Bayraktar, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, said: "We need nuclear energy to meet Turkey’s growing energy demand and achieve the goal of zero emissions by 2053. The Akkuyu NPP project is one of the largest projects in our country ... Turkey and Russia are working on this project as a single team with all stakeholders."

Alexey Likhachev, director general of Rosatom, said: "2024 has become a year of not only serious challenges but also great achievements for the Akkuyu NPP. We have witnessed one of the key events at the site - the completion of the turbine installation. This is a necessary step on the long road to launching the power unit. We will continue to make every effort to ensure that the first nuclear power unit starts operating in Turkey in the near future. It will provide millions of consumers with stable low-carbon energy."

In a report on the event, Russia's Tass news agency quoted Likhachev as saying that the progress on the turbine for the first unit at Akkuyu had been achieved despite problems caused by the impact of sanctions on supplier agreements with Germany's Siemens. This had led to a change in the supply chain: "We leveraged our competitive advantage because no other organisation has the experience we do in integrating elements of international projects ... we turned to our Chinese friends, who extended a helping hand to us," Tass reported Likhachev as saying.

The background
 

Akkuyu, in the southern Mersin province, is Turkey's first nuclear power plant. Rosatom is building four VVER-1200 reactors, under a so-called BOO (build-own-operate) model. According to the terms of the 2010 Intergovernmental Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey, the commissioning of the first power unit of the nuclear power plant must take place within seven years from receipt of all permits for the construction of the unit.

The licence for the construction of the first unit was issued in 2018, with construction work beginning that year. Nuclear fuel was delivered to the site in April 2023. Turkey's Nuclear Regulatory Agency issued permission for the first unit to be commissioned in December, and in February it was announced that the reactor compartment had been prepared for controlled assembly of the reactor - and the generator stator had also been installed in its pre-design position.

The aim is for unit 1 to begin supplying Turkey's energy system in 2025. When the 4800 MWe plant is completed, it is expected to meet about 10% of Turkey's electricity needs, with the aim that all four units will be operational by the end of 2028.