Turkish companies are interested in obtaining a stake in Türkiye's first nuclear power plant that is being built by Rosatom and the talks have begun on joint ownership, head of the Russia's state atomic energy corporation said on Tuesday.
The Akkuyu nuclear power plant is being constructed in the Mediterranean province of Mersin under a 2010 accord worth $20 billion.
Türkiye aims to bring the initial unit of the 4.8-gigawatt, four-reactor plant online in the coming months. Once fully operational, it is expected to generate around 10% of Türkiye's electricity.
"We have started substantive discussions with a number of Turkish companies on the parameters of participation in the share capital," Rosatom chief Alexey Likhachev said.
"There is currently strong interest among Turkish companies in entering the share capital of this project," he added.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in December that Russia had provided $9 billion in new financing for the project.
Türkiye aims to reach 7.2 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2035 and 20 GW by 2050. It plans to complement the conventional nuclear plants with small modular reactors.
Ankara is also in talks with South Korea, China, Russia and the United States on two additional nuclear plants it plans to build in the Black Sea province of Sinop and Thrace region.
Likhachev said talks on Turkish investors acquiring a stake in Akkuyu have intensified against the backdrop of the Iran war, which has exposed the fragility of the global energy balance.
"The events in the Persian Gulf, in the Strait of Hormuz, once again force countries to return to the need to have powerful, reliable sources of electricity under their ownership and on their own territory," Likhachev said.
