ANKARA

 Turkey's first nuclear power plant will be used for peaceful purposes and not for nuclear enrichment, the Turkish energy minister has said.

Taner Yildiz's comments on Friday came at a farewell ceremony at the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources held for 83 Turkish nuclear engineering students heading for training in Russia, who will later staff Turkey's first nuclear power plant.

Yildiz said: "We aim to build a nuclear research reactor, but for peaceful purposes. Turkey does not have an aim of building an atom bomb, nor nuclear enrichment.

"Developing Turkey must not have an undeveloped energy sector - we aim to form a team to build a nuclear power plant by domestic production and Turkish engineers."

The students, selected out of 5,000 applicants, were being sent to the Russian Federation for seven years of training in nuclear power plants, nuclear theory and language skills.

"We want to build our nuclear power plants in the future with domestic resources - Turkish engineers and trained students," Yildiz said, adding that the Turkish energy sector was worth $14 billion in 2013. 

Safe plant

The country's first plant, to be located in Akkuyu in Mersin province, southern Turkey, will require $22 billion with construction beginning in 2016 and it becoming operational in 2020, with a life cycle of 60 years.

The project is expected to produce about 35 billion kilowatt-hours per year, and scheduled to become fully operational in 2023, the 100-year anniversary of the Turkish Republic. 

An environmental impact statement for the project will be completed next month, Yildiz said, adding it was imperative for Turkey to build a safe nuclear plant after Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster had created new concepts for nuclear security. 

Rosatom, the state atomic energy corporation of Russia, signed an agreement with Turkey in 2011 to build and operate the nuclear power plant, which is a sister project to Russia's Novovoronezh plant in Voronezh Oblast, central Russia. 

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