All four units planned to be in operation by 2028
Turkey has reached a 56% local content rate at its Akkuyu nuclear power station project, contributing about $7.5bn (€7.25bn) to the country’s economy, according to an official from the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.
Salih Sari, head of the department for nuclear infrastructure development at the ministry, said in a social media post that Ankara will aim to increase this figure to at least $10bn by the end of 2028.
“We are working hard day and night so that the Turkish industry can become a key player in the nuclear field,” said Sari.
He said with the commissioning of all four units at Akkuyu by 2028, Turkey’s goal is to join the league of nuclear-powered nations.
According to Sari, efforts will then be aimed to increase local content rates to over 80% for Turkey’s proposed nuclear plants on the Black Sea shores at Sinop and Thrace.
He said Turkey’s “ultimate ambition” will be to become self-sufficient “in all aspects of nuclear energy” by 2053 and reach a level at which it can export nuclear technology.
Turkey has no commercial nuclear reactors in operation at present but has outlined an ambitious strategy to deploy about 20 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050.
Russia is building Turkey’s first commercial nuclear power station, the $20bn (€18.4bn) Akkuyu in in Mersin province on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast. The 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 2018 and was expected to be completed by 2023.
Turkey is also planning two additional nuclear stations with four units each at Sinop on northern Turkey’s Black Sea coast and Igneada in the Thrace region of western Turkey, not far from the Bulgarian border.
No decisions have been made about the technology vendors for the two projects as Turkish officials have been engaged in negotiations with US, South Korean, Russian, and Chinese companies and governments.
Earlier this year, energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar said Ankara is also interested in the developments around small modular reactors.
