Rosatom says commissioning of Turkiye's Akkuyu nuclear plant is months away

Aleksey Likhachev, director general of Russian state nuclear company Rosatom, said on Friday, 24 July 2026 (2 Mordad 1405) that commissioning work at Turkiye's Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant is expected to begin within months. He spoke after meeting Turkiye's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar. "Only a few months remain before commissioning work begins," Likhachev said, adding that Rosatom and the customer's representatives are working to accelerate all production processes.

Likhachev said the project had faced pressure from the position taken by foreign financial institutions, obstacles created by European suppliers and direct interventions by some Western public institutions, and that these factors had affected both the project's costs and its timetable. He also pointed to legal measures Turkiye has introduced to support the nuclear energy sector, including the Akkuyu project.

Anton Dedusenko, board chairperson of Akkuyu Nuclear JSC, had earlier told an industry forum in Istanbul that construction of the first unit was complete, that fuel assembly simulators had been loaded into the reactor and reactor assembly finished, and that cold hydraulic testing of the reactor was underway. Akkuyu is Turkiye's first nuclear power plant and is being built in Mersin province.