Final steam generators delivered for Akkuyu Unit 4 reactor hall

The final reactor-hall hardware for Akkuyu Unit 4 has now arrived, with four steam generators delivered by sea after a roughly 3,000-kilometre trip from Russia to the Mediterranean construction site in Mersin Province. For Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, the shipment is a visible marker that Unit 4 has moved beyond civil works into another heavy-equipment phase that can be tracked piece by piece.

The components were manufactured at Rosatom’s Atommash plant in Volgodonsk and are huge even by nuclear standards, with each set weighing 340 tonnes and measuring about 14 metres long and 4 metres in diameter. In a VVER-1200 unit, steam generators are part of the primary-circuit chain that transfers heat from the reactor coolant to the secondary side, where that energy is turned into steam and ultimately electricity. Sergey Butskikh, Akkuyu Nuclear’s general manager, described the steam generators as key components of the reactor plant, and their arrival completes delivery of the core reactor-hall equipment for the fourth unit.

That matters because Akkuyu is not a paper project. The four-unit VVER-1200 plant has been under construction since Unit 1 formally began in April 2018, followed by Unit 2 in April 2020 and Unit 3 in March 2021, while Unit 4 received its construction license in October 2021. The project, launched under the Russian-Turkish agreement signed in May 2010 and managed through Akkuyu Nükleer A.Ş., is being built as a four-unit, 4,800 MW station that Akkuyu Nuclear says will supply power to more than 12 million consumers across more than 10 provinces.

The steam-generator delivery also fits a broader startup push across the site. Akkuyu Nuclear said Unit 2 received permission on May 8, 2026 to begin pre-commissioning stage works, after saying on March 25 that primary-circuit large-scale equipment installation in Unit 2’s reactor building had been completed. It also said on April 22 that passive heat removal system installation at Unit 1 was finished. Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has said electricity generation from Akkuyu would begin in 2026, while Butskikh has said commissioning work was underway and the first reactor was moving toward operation.

For Unit 4, the message from this shipment is straightforward: the plant is still in the hardware-buildout phase, but the most visible reactor-hall pieces are now in place. That does not by itself rewrite the commissioning schedule, yet it does show Akkuyu advancing in the same heavy-equipment sequence that will eventually carry the project from construction into startup.