Talks with China on nuclear power plant make progress: Minister

ANKARA

Talks with China to build Türkiye’s third nuclear power plant have made progress, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has said, adding that discussions with Russia for another nuclear plant are ongoing.

“We have reached a very important point in the talks with China, we need to finalize this within the next few months,” Bayraktar told a group of journalists.

The third nuclear plant is planned to be built in the Thrace region.

Meanwhile, negotiations with Russia for the second nuclear power plant planned in the Black Sea province of Sinop continue, Bayraktar said.

“We are also in contact with South Korea. Türkiye’s priority in this regard is more technology transfer and localization,” he added.

Russia is building Türkiye’s first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu NPP, in the southern province of Mersin.

The plant, which will have four VVER-1200 power reactors upon completion, will have a total installed capacity of 4,800 megawatts. It will produce 35 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, about 10 percent of the country’s power consumption, when it becomes fully operational.

The minister also said talks on small modular reactors (SMR) continue.

“We can add 5,000 megawatts of small modular reactors to our system by 2050.”

Türkiye has a huge potential in renewable energy, Bayraktar stressed. “We are planning 42,000 megawatts of solar, 18,000 megawatts of wind and 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind power plants by 2035,” he said.

Presently, some 55 percent of Türkiye’s installed capacity is composed of renewable energy sources.

Türkiye aims to increase the share of renewable energy within its installed capacity to 65 percent by the year 2035.