Rosatom has begun start-up operations at the first power unit of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Turkey, Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev said at the International Youth Nuclear Forum in Obninsk.
"Any vendor would have abandoned the Akkuyu project two years ago. It would have found a number of reasons - legal, justified ones, and would have explained itself in court. Because it so happened that the project was impossible to implement for various reasons. We have begun start-up operations at the first unit," Likhachev said.
Rosatom is building Turkey's first NPP, Akkuyu, in Mersin province. The NPP will consist of four power units with a capacity of 1,200 MW each. The commissioning of the first power unit is expected in 2026.
The implementation of the project has faced a number of problems, in particular, due to the non-delivery of equipment for the NPP by Germany's Siemens. "We encountered a situation where, despite a concluded contract, a supplier from a Western country - Siemens in Germany - violated its contractual obligations for the supply of a certain range of equipment," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in the autumn of 2024.
