Hareket Handles Akkuyu Nuclear Cargo

By Simon West

Hareket Heavy Lifting and Project Transportation has delivered a shipment of out-of-gauge components for the construction of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant’s third reactor in Türkiye.

The cargo, comprising the reactor’s heaviest components, included a 434-ton generator stator, a 263-ton generator rotor, a 240-ton LP2 inner casing, and two 52-ton cooler units.

The components arrived at Akkuyu's own purpose-built port in Mersin in southern Türkiye and then discharged directly from the vessel onto the company's Scheuerle and Goldhofer SPMTs. The pieces were transported from the terminal to a temporary warehouse site and unloaded using equipment including a SBL1100 gantry crane.

The cargo will be kept in storage ready for installation.

"Since the power plant is in construction phase, one of the most important things (for transporting such heavy cargo) is the road conditions on the route," Samet Gürsu, operations director at Hareket, told Breakbulk. "Site roads are changing all the time and there is a need for continuously making route checks inside the plant."

Akkuyu, Türkiye’s first NPP, is being built in Mersin province by Russian nuclear conglomerate Rosatom, with work on the first of four 1.2 gigawatt reactors beginning in late 2017.

Once up and running, the US$20 billion plant is expected to provide about 10 percent of Türkiye’s electricity demand, with completion of all four reactors slated for 2026.

Istanbul-headquartered Hareket, which has been supporting the project since construction work began, said the unique safety and regulatory requirements of NPPs call for extra security precautions when transporting heavy and oversized cargo to and from the job site.

"All items going in to or out of a plant are examined carefully," Gürsu said. "There are protocols inside the plant to follow, while all heavy transport operations are accompanied by the plant’s own escort cars as well as ours to guide traffic and make the operations safer."


Hareket will be exhibiting at Breakbulk Europe 2024 on 21-23 May at Rotterdam Ahoy.