Rosatom: No Start Date for Turkey Nuclear Plant

The head of the Russian Rosatom subsidiary responsible for building Turkey's first nuclear power plant declined on Tuesday to give a start date for the project, saying delays were to be expected in such large-scale ventures.

Keen to wean itself off an almost complete dependence on imported energy, Turkey in 2013 commissioned Russia's state-owned Rosatom to build four 1,200-megawatt reactors.

Rosatom initially pledged to have the first of the four reactors in the southern Turkish town of Akkuyu ready by 2019 but regulatory hurdles and Russia's financial woes have slowed the $20 billion project's progress.

In March, a senior Turkish energy official told Reuters the project would not be online before at least 2022 while in April Turkey's Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said construction was expected to start at the end of 2016, some 18 months later than originally planned.

"Such delays do happen in nuclear projects like this," Fuad Akhundov, general manager of Akkuyu NGS, the project company wholly owned by Rosatom, told a news conference in Ankara.

"We will finish this construction in seven years after we obtain all the necessary permits. I can't tell you the exact date for completion...Our company's goal is to fulfil Turkey's energy needs in 2023 targets," he said.

With energy import costs at about $50 billion annually and demand forecast as the fastest growing in Europe, Ankara wants at least 5 percent of its electricity generation to come from nuclear energy by 2023, cutting dependency on natural gas largely bought from Russia.

Rosatom has not yet received a construction licence from the Turkish authorities, which is required before building work begins on the reactors.

The licence was due to be obtained by end-2015 but increased concerns over security in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, have led to nearly a year of delays attaining environmental approval from Turkish authorities.

Akhundov said the company has so far invested $3 billion in the project and had secured its funding until 2017. "Our production licence is not yet granted but we will continue our investments because we trust the Turkish economy," he said.

(By Ercan Gurses)