The Turkish government has decided that Rosatom will build the country’s second NPP, Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev told the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament). The announcement was broadcast on the website of the lower house. “President [Taiip Revzhip] Erdogan publicly announced that a political decision had been made to transfer another site to us,” Likhachev noted. Now we are studying the details. Most likely, it will be a site called Sinop.”
Likhachev also confirmed that unit 1 of the Akkuyu NPP should begin operation in 2025. At the end of November 2023, the Deputy Director for the Construction of the Nuclear Power Plant Dmitry Romanets said unit 1 will be put into operation in July 2025. Earlier that month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak had said that Russia and Türkiye were ready to expand cooperation in the field of small NPPs. He noted that Russia was interested in the construction of a new station in the Black Sea province of Sinop as well as in the construction of low-power NPPs and the use of non-energy nuclear technologies.
Earlier Japan had agreed to build a plant in Sinop. The project was agreed by the Japanese and Turkish governments in 2013. A consortium led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had been conducting a feasibility study until March 2018 for the construction of a four-unit 4500MWe plant in the province of Sinop in Türkiye’s Black Sea region. However, Japan pulled out of the project later that year.
Image: Proposed site of Türkiye's second nuclear power plant (courtesy of Rosatom)
