A critical delay in the arrival of around $7bn in funding has reportedly hit the Russian-led Akkuyu project to construct Turkey’s first nuclear power plant (NPP).
The matter was addressed as Turkey’s top diplomat Hakan Fidan met Russian President Vladimir Putin and various of his officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at the Kremlin on the evening of May 27.
Speaking at a joint press conference following his meeting with counterpart Lavrov, Fidan said that there was a discussion on resolving setbacks experienced during the construction of Akkuyu NPP.
“We once again had the opportunity to observe how sensitive the Russian side is on this issue, and how closely Mr Putin follows the matter in all its detail,” said Fidan, as reported by Turkiye Today.
The launch of the first reactor at Akkuyu NPP, located on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast in Mersin, is already at least two years behind schedule. The project also hit a big hurdle last September when Germany declined to provide licences to Siemens Energy to deliver key components.
According to Turkish news outlet Haberturk, as things stand, the first of the four planned units now remains on track for preliminary testing by the end of this year or early 2026, but the broader project timeline is under pressure given the unresolved financial difficulty.
Amid the funding constraints, Akkuyu Nuclear JSC—the company managing the NPP project that is reliant on the expertise of Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear power corporation—is said to have redirected all available resources into finishing the first reactor unit. Project officials are reported as believing that once it goes operational, its revenue stream will help finance and accelerate the building of the remaining three units.
Sources who spoke to Haberturk did not give a clear explanation for the bottleneck hindering the transfer of the funds. However, the indications are that Rosatom, the project majority stakeholder, has been seeking financial concessions from Turkey. They include exemptions from withholding tax and other fiscal measures. Turkey has seemingly not met its demands.
The project previously experienced a financial obstacle when an attempt to wire $3bn to Turkey’s Ziraat Bank for the nuclear investment’s reserves, arranged by a partnership of Russia’s Gazprombank, US-based Citibank and JPMorgan, ran up against a US Department of Justice intervention, as reported in February by The Wall Street Journal. The US move blocked over $2bn of the transfer routed through JPMorgan, freezing the funds over alleged sanctions violations. No solution has been found as yet to release the capital.
On completion, Akkuyu NPP is to boast four VVER-1200-type pressurised water reactors with a total installed capacity of 4,800 megawatts—enough to meet around 10% of Turkey’s electricity demand. It is the first nuclear plant in the world built under a build-own-operate (BOO) model by a country in another country.
Czech PM Fiala admits cabinet may not be able to sign Dukovany nuclear contract
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala admitted his centre-right cabinet may not be able to sign the major €16bn Dukovany nuclear contract while in office.
“The honest response is that I hope we will make it [sign the Dukovany contract], but I don’t know, because it is not up to us,” Fiala replied to a Czech Radio (CRo) question about how probable it is that the contract will be signed during the current parliamentary term, which ends with autumn elections.
The contract with South Korean Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) faces extended delays after one of the two unsuccessful bidders, French Électricité de France (EDF), filed a lawsuit against the selection of KHNP.
The Brno court blocked the signing of the contract, stating it “preliminarily assessed the suing party’s arguments … as relevant and fairly strong, that is why it issued the preliminary measure. This does not yet mean that the suing party will succeed in a subsequent court case.”
The EU is also considering a review of the tender under foreign subsidy rules, according to media reports, and the EC spokesperson for competition Lea Zuber confirmed last week that “technical” talks are in place, as bne IntelliNews covered.
“European Commission has a right to investigate and review whether rules have been obeyed […] and whether some unwarranted support exists, but we are not worried about that,” Fiala also told CRo.
Czechia is to hold parliamentary elections on October 3-4, and the opposition ANO party of populist ex-Prime Minister Andrej Babiš is a clear favourite to win, though it remains unclear what sort of government ANO would be able to form. A grand coalition arrangement with Fiala’s neoliberal ODS party is a widely speculated option in the Czech media.
In the latest STEM poll for CNN Prima News, the Fiala-led SPOLU [Together] joint list trails ANO (32.3%) by a wide margin (20.7%), followed by opposition far right SPD (12.6%), centrist ruling coalition STAN (11.2%), liberal Pirate Party (7.3%), and red-brown Kremlin-leaning STAČILO! list (6.7%).
While ANO has criticised Fiala’s cabinet for mishandling the Dukovany tender, its leaders are committed to pursuing the project.
“If we will be in the government, we will respect the tender results, but we will talk with everyone on a highest level,” one of the ANO leaders and ex-Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček told conservative outlet Echo24 earlier this month. “I defend the interests of Czechia, which needs to finish the project,” Havlíček added.
During the CRo interview, Fiala also reiterated his stance that “without Dukovany, we won’t have enough energy we need. We are not able to replace everything with renewable resources […] we simply need to have nuclear” [sources].
With just 16.4%, Czechia sits at the bottom of the list of EU countries in terms of share of energy from renewable sources in gross electricity consumption, just above Malta (10.7%), and is one of just four EU members with less than a 20% share as of 2023, according to Enerdata. The EU average is 45.3%.
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