Negotiations continuing with China and US on other reactor projects
Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation Rosatom is “ahead” in a bid to build Turkey’s second nuclear power station, press reports said
Rosatom already has experience in Turkey’s nuclear sector through the construction of four Russia-supplied units at the nation’s first commercial nuclear power station at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast in southern Turkey. That makes it well placed to also build the Sinop station, energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in an interview.
“This is the main reason why they’re naturally keen and in this sense I and many others think they’re ahead,” he said. Rosatom is “a company that’s invested in Turkey and has gained experience.”
South Korea is the other country that is known to have held talks on the planned four-reactor Sinop facility on the Black Sea coast in northern Turkey.
The Sinop station could involve a joint venture between the public and private sectors and licensing is expected to take two or three years, Bayraktar said.
Turkey currently aims to add over 20 GW of nuclear capacity to its energy mix by 2050, but it could reach that target in the 2040s if the Sinop site and another planned nuclear plant in the Thrace region of western Turkey are expanded to their maximum capacity of eight reactors each, Bayraktar said.
Eight units at Sinop and Thrace, plus four under construction at Akkuyu is an ambitious target that would give 22.28 GW of net capacity, if all 20 units were of the same type as those under construction at Akkuyu.
Negotiations are continuing with China on the Thrace project and with the US on small modular reactors, according to Bayraktar. US nuclear technology giant Westinghouse Electric Co. is interested in both small and conventional nuclear projects in Turkey, he said, with executives from the company scheduled to visit Turkey later this month.
The $20bn (€18.1bn) Akkuyu nuclear power station will have four Generation III+ VVER-1200 units, with the first expected to come online in 2025 and a further unit starting every year afterwards.
Construction of Akkuyu-1 began in April 2018 and was initially planned for completion in 2023. Rosatom said in April that the “full-scale” commissioning phase has begun for Unit 1.
Reports have said that Akkuyu will meet 10% of Turkey’s electricity demand when fully operational in 2028.
Turkey wants to generate slightly over 11% of electricity from nuclear energy by 2035, and 29% by 2053 to reach its climate goals, Turkish officials have said.
