1,000 Turkish nationals to work at Akkuyu
Neşe Karanfil – ANKARA
About 3,200 staff will work at the Akkuyu nuclear power plant currently being constructed in Turkey’s southern province of Mersin once it goes online, with 1,000 of them to be Turkish nationals, the human resources director of Akkuyu Nuclear JSC has said.
Marina Karaseva said the plan is that 65 percent of the staff will be Russians and the remaining 35 percent Turks when the first unit of the power plant becomes operational. She said this ratio could change over the years.
Karaseva spoke to Turkish reporters about the ongoing process during a meeting at ATOMEXPO International Forum held in the Russian city of Sochi on April 15-16.
She gave information about the training of students who are set to be employed as high qualified staff at the plant in the near future. She said that the master’s education of Turkish students who completed their undergraduate studies at the Russian National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI) has already started.
“As for the third stage of the training cooperation, the target is to train students at the high school level. Our talks in this area are continuing. Specialties and curriculum at the technical field in high schools are being analyzed. We are discussing what we can include in a program if we are going to provide initial training in the nuclear field,” said Karaseva.
“I am talking with regards to our previous experiences; when we go to a country [to build power plant], we expose the [students] in high schools in that area to expertise training. And we are thinking of implementing the same thing in Turkey. We are currently building a nuclear power plant in Turkey, but of course this single one will not be enough for Turkey. Other nuclear power plants will follow that,” said Karaseva, stressing that the country will need more people specializing in nuclear power plant operations in the future.
The Akkuyu project started with an intergovernmental agreement signed between Turkey and Russia on May 12, 2010. Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom and participants will build the plant comprising four units, each of which has a capacity of 1,200 megawatts.
The plant will have a working life of 8,000 hours per year and will produce 35 billion kilowatts of electricity at full capacity, which will meet about 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity needs.
The plant has an operational date for the first reactor set for 2023, while the plant is expected to be up and running at full capacity by 2025.
