The groundbreaking ceremony of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), will be held in the southern province of Mersin on the Mediterranean coast on Tuesday.
The Akkuyu NPP will be built by Russian State Nuclear Energy Agency Rosatom and will compose of four units each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts. NPP will produce 35 billion kilowatts of electricity at full capacity, which will cover more than 10 percent of Turkey’s electricity needs, or equivalent to the electricity demand of Istanbul.
The grant comes a day before a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ankara, where Putin and President Erdogan will also attend a ceremony to officially launch Akkuyu’s first unit.