Turkey says it will speed up work on nuclear power plant with Russia

BELEK - Reuters

Cihan Photo

Turkey will speed up work to overcome regulatory hurdles that have delayed its first nuclear power plant project, planned to be built by Russia, Energy Minister Ali Rıza Alaboyun told Reuters on Nov. 16, adding that they still aim for it to become operational by 2022. 

“The uncertainty after the June 7 election prevented us from smoothing out the issues. But the work will begin again from next week and the legal hurdles will be addressed once the new government is formed,” Alaboyun said on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Belek, in the southern coastal province of Antalya.

“The [start] date is 2022,” he added.

Alaboyun’s comments came after a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the G-20 Summit.

Alaboyun noted that Erdoğan and Putin spoke about the planned Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, about which many question marks linger. 

“We are not against the project. We just need time for some matters to be clarified in the project, such as how many routes will be online … In the end, this pipeline will pass through several countries, including some European countries and Turkey,” he said. 

Last month, Russia decreased the project’s capacity from 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 31.5 bcm, but Alaboyun said there had been no formal talks about such a change.

“No formal application has been submitted to us. So we continue to evaluate the project in its first draft version. Russia did not mention anything about the number of routes either yesterday,” he added.