Minister Bayraktar: Türkiye's 2050 Nuclear Energy Target is 20 Thousand Megawatts

Stating that Türkiye needs more energy in an electrifying world, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar said, "We will be able to solve this problem by using renewable energy sources, by searching for our own oil and natural gas, by using our energy efficiently, but by including nuclear power in this business. Therefore, the target we set for ourselves for 2050 is to have an installed power of 20 thousand megawatts. Here, we have 4 reactors under construction in Akkuyu and hopefully the first reactor will be built in the next few months." We aim to produce electricity.

We aim to build a power plant in Sinop. We have a target of a power plant in Thrace, but as I just expressed to my fellow competitors, Türkiye's new nuclear age, that is, what we call nuclear, has a 70-year story, now the new age of nuclear is starting and there are small modular reactors there. At the beginning of this work, these competitions, especially the third one we held this year, 192 teams participated. We have seen very important projects in different categories. We actually received presentations of this at our Çekmece research reactor a month ago. Awards will be distributed today. We have seen such interesting and beautifully prepared projects that are truly valuable.

We want Türkiye not to miss the small modular reactor revolution and its era and to become a country that has the technology in this business from the beginning, produces the technology and hopefully exports it in the future. Let's install the small modular reactors that we will build within that 20 thousand megawatt target, with our own technologies and our own people. Of course, it is the most important change and let me put it this way. To do all this, two things are essential. Without these, there is nothing to do. One of them is that we need a very serious political will for this. So we need to stand behind this very seriously, because this is not a one-year, 5-year job, this is an issue that requires decades and a lot of effort. There must be a very strong national and political will behind it. Thanks to our President, this exists now, but on the other hand, we need human resources. "If we don't have these friends, we won't have the chance to do these things," he said.