Turkey close to commissioning first Akkuyu NPP reactor next year - energy minister

MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) - Turkey could commission the first reactor at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in 2026, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said at the Russian Energy Week.

"We are fairly close to launching the first nuclear reactor, hopefully next year," he said.

Turkey needs at least 12 large reactors and approximately 5 GW of small modular reactor capacity. Bayraktar said. He said in the summer that eight large reactors would be needed.

The Rosatom state corporation is planning to commission the Akkuyu plant next year despite the delay, Rosatom head Alexei Likhachev said in August. "We have postponed [the commissioning] by three to four months," Likhachev said. "Yet we are still planning the industrial commissioning next year," he said.

Rosatom is building Turkey's first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu, in Mersin province. The station will consist of four power units with a capacity of 1200 MW each. Earlier it was reported that Turkey is considering two more nuclear power plant construction projects in the provinces of Sinop and Trakia.

In October 2024, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Russia and Turkey were assessing how Siemens's failure to deliver equipment for the Akkuyu NPP could influence the project schedule. "We've found ourselves in a situation where, despite a contract concluded, a supplier from a Western country, namely the Siemens company from Germany, breached its contractual obligations on supplying certain equipment items," Novak said at the time.

Rosatom and its Turkish partners promptly made adjustments and found a solution to the problem by buying the necessary equipment from friendly countries, he said.

Likhachev said in early 2025 that Rosatom was planning to sue Siemens over its failure to supply equipment to the Akkuyu NPP.