Russia seeks to sell 49% of nuclear power plant it is building in Turkey

Rosatom Corp., a Russian state-controlled company, is in talks to sell a 49 percent stake it owns in a $25 billion nuclear power plant it is building in Turkey, Bloomberg reported.

Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, a 4,800-megawatt facility, is being built by Russia’s Rosatom at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast.

Talks are underway with Turkish and foreign investors, Anton Dedusenko, chairman of the board of directors of the Rosatom subsidiary responsible for the Akkuyu plant, said on Tuesday.

“The closer we get to the start of electricity production at the first unit, the more investors are coming,” Anton Dedusenko said in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Nuclear Power Plants Expo & Summit in Istanbul.

A previous attempt to sell a stake failed in 2018, when a consortium of Turkish firms (Cengiz Holding AS, Kolin Insaat Turizm Sanayi ve Ticaret AS and Kalyon Insaat Sanayi ve Ticaret AS) withdrew from negotiations, citing an inability to agree on commercial terms.

The first unit of the Akkuyu plant is currently in the testing phase and is expected to start generating electricity in 2026, Dedusenko said.

“I am confident that by the end of the year we will have the necessary systems to be able to introduce electricity into the grid,” he added.

The Akkuyu nuclear power plant project has been plagued by delays and financing problems as foreign banks fear exposure to U.S. sanctions, forcing Turkey and Russia to seek alternative ways to pay for construction work, including a natural gas swap.

“There are several ways we could deliver money here. We can deliver Russian rubles or Turkish lira,” Dedusenko said.

Turkey’s plans call for building more than 20 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2050. In addition to the Akkuyu plant, a second plant is planned on the Black Sea coast in the Sinope region, and a third nuclear power plant is planned in the Thrace region of northwestern Turkey.