Türkiye seeks to deepen cooperation with Rosatom

SOCHI

Türkiye is keen to expand its cooperation with Russian nuclear company Rosatom in the Sinop Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) project, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has said.

Rosatom is currently building Türkiye’s first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu, in the southern province of Mersin. Türkiye plans to construct a second nuclear power plant in the province of Sinop on the Black Sea coast and a third one in the Thrace region to meet its fast-growing energy demand.

Russia is interested in the Sinop project, said Bayraktar, who attended the international nuclear energy event ATOMEXPO-2024 in the Russian city of Sochi.

“We want to extend our partnership with Rosatom in Sinop,” the minister added.

Other countries, such as China and South Korea, are also interested in taking part in nuclear energy projects in Türkiye, according to Bayraktar.

“There are negotiations with China regarding the nuclear power plant to be built in the Thrace region. We are hoping to finalize those talks by the end of this year and move on to the construction phase. Because this planned power plant needs to start generating power in the early 2030s,” the minister said.

Türkiye aims to generate 20 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear power plants by 2050, Bayraktar noted.

“We need to build four reactors both in Sinop and the Thrace,” he added.

In order the achieve this target, Türkiye plans to focus on small modular reactors with 5 gigawatts capacity over the next 20 to 30 years, according to the minister.

The construction of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant was launched in 2018.

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.

Türkiye needs to generate more energy to help its industry grow and meet domestic consumption, Bayraktar said, noting that demand for energy has tripled over the past years.

“We forecast that demand for energy will grow by 4 percent annually over the next 10 years. While meeting this demand, we want to increase our capacity with clean energy sources,” the minister added.

According to the estimates in the Türkiye National Energy Plan, electricity consumption in the country will climb to 455.3 terawatts hour (TWh) in 2030 and rise further to 510.3 TWh in 2025.

The country generated 326.3 TWh of electricity last year, while the consumption was 330.3 TWh.

The total installed capacity reached 107,594 MW as of the end of February, with wind and solar accounting for 11.1 percent and 11.5 percent of the capacity, respectively. The shares of hydropower and natural gas were 29.7 percent and 23.3 percent, respectively.