Akkuyu nuclear power station, 90km from Cyprus, to be operational ‘next year’

Turkey’s Akkuyu nuclear power station, which is located on the southern coast of the country’s Mersin province, 90 kilometres from Cyprus, will be operational next year, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Tuesday. “The intensive testing process is continuing at Akkuyu. Due to nuclear safety and the international conventions and agreements to which Turkey is a party, it is a very special area, and nothing has been left to chance. Every precaution has been taken,” he said at the Turkiye Energy Summit in Istanbul. He added that the government aims to load the first nuclear fuel into the station “in the next few weeks”, and that this will “mark the physical startup of Akkuyu”. Beyond that, he said, “we will be using Akkuyu electricity in our system from 2027 onwards”. Construction at Akkuyu began in 2018, with it expected that the first reactor will enter service this year and the second reactor will enter service next year. Each reactor will provide a total of 1,114 megawatts of electricity – around 2.5 per cent of Turkey’s electricity consumption each. The project has caught the eye of anti-nuclear activists in Cyprus and beyond, with demonstrators having gathered in Nicosia as early as 2017 to protest the plans, while European Parliament group The Left, to which Akel belongs, had in 2015 warned against the plans. “The plant is to be constructed in Mersin, in a seismic area on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. This exposes to risk first and foremost the population in the area of Mersin, but also all countries and peoples in the region,” it said. It then offered its “support to the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot organisations that have joined forces to raise awareness both in Cyprus, Turkey and abroad, aiming to stop the construction”. The power generated at Akkuyu will only be usable in Cyprus if it is connected to Turkey by a cable, though these plans appear to have stalled after the European network of transmission system operators for electricity (Entso-E) refused to endorse the plan.