A new company has joined the construction work at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Turkey's first nuclear plant, Russian state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom announced yesterday.

According to a Rosatom statement, the new contractor, Titan-2 Concern, will act as a contractor for Atomstroyexport (ASE) - Rosatom's engineering division.

The cooperation with Titan-2 Concern at the Akkuyu NPP is the next step in the company's (ASE) strategy to have reliable partners in construction and assembly at all construction facilities, Valery Limarenko, head of ASE said.

CEO of Titan-2 Concern Grigory Naginsky said that his company is well placed to participate in nuclear power plant projects. It has extensive experience in the field and was involved in Russia's Leningrad NPP-2 and pre-construction works at Finland's Hanhikivi-1 NPP.

"We have accumulated long experience in the construction of nuclear facilities. We enter the Turkish project with a thorough understanding of the NPP construction processes and technologies," Naginsky said.

Rosatom's Rosenergoatom Concern holds a 50 percent share in Titan-2 Concern.

Work at the Akkuyu NPP started with an intergovernmental agreement signed between Turkey and Russia on May 12, 2010.

The construction of Turkey's first nuclear power plant was launched on April 3 through a groundbreaking ceremony attended by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin via a video conference call from the Beştepe Presidential Complex in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

The Akkuyu NPP is expected to reach its full capacity in 2025 with four reactors, each with an installed

capacity of 1,200 megawatts. The plant's date for the first reactor to be operational has been set for 2023.

The plant will have a working life of 8,000 hours per year and will produce 35 billion kilowatts of electricity at full capacity, which will meet about 10 percent of Turkey's electricity needs.

The Akkuyu NPP holds the records for the highest investment in a single project in Turkey, with an estimated cost of $20 billion. The nuclear plant deal is part of wider energy projects with Russia, including the TurkStream pipeline that will deliver Russian gas to Turkey and southern Europe.