“Work onsite is underway,” he said. “Maybe we will hold an official ceremony for pouring concrete by March.”
Mr Likhachev also confirmed that Rosatom subsidiary Titan-2, which is the main contractor for the construction of Akkuyu, and Turkish private investment construction company Ictas had established a joint venture for construction of Akkuyu-2. “This alliance means we can expect successful implementation of the project,” he said.
First concrete was poured for the foundation slab at Unit 1 in March 2019. Rosatom said at the time that the next stage would include the construction of the exterior and interior walls of the reactor building and the concrete bases for the auxiliary buildings and the emergency control room building.
Turkey’s electricity transmission corporation Teias and Akkuyu NPP, the company building, said last month they had signed an agreement on connecting the facility to the grid.
The Akkuyu nuclear power station, the first commercial nuclear power station in Turkey, is being built near Mersin on the country’s southern Mediterranean coast for €20bn under an intergovernmental contract signed with Russia in 2010.
The station will have four Russian Generation III+ 1,200-MW VVER units, with the first expected to come online in 2023 and a further unit launched every year
Press reports have put the project cost at about $20 bn, although this has not been confirmed either by Rosatom or Akkuyu NPP.
The Akkuyu project is currently entirely funded by Russia, but in future Russian companies are expected to hold a 51% stake alongside third-party investors.
