Turkish students are preparing to become specialists in the design, operation, and engineering of nuclear power plants to start working at Turkey’s first nuclear power plant Akkuyu. This project is being implemented jointly by Turkey and Russia. On March 10 this year, the presidents of the two countries launched the construction of the third power unit of Akkuyu NPP.

Nurberk Sungur is one of the students studying at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University to become a nuclear power specialist and start working at the nuclear power plant in the future. To date, over 180 students from Turkey have already been trained under the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant training program. The program is implemented on the basis of the National Nuclear Research University MEPhI and the Institute of Energy of SPbPU.

“It is not easy to study. We understand all the responsibility we have, and we are preparing to apply all the knowledge gained at Polytechnic University in practice,” says Nurberk Sungur. In 2020, Nurberk was one of 100 female students awarded scholarships by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as part of a special program named after Maria Skłodowska-Curie. “Like Maria Skłodowska-Curie, I was born on November 7. That says a lot,” jokes Nurberk Sungur. In 2015, the girl passed a difficult selection for the Akkuyu NPP training program in Turkey, learned Russian, and studied nuclear power for one semester under the academic mobility program at Politecnico di Milano, a partner university of SPbPU.

The future nuclear power plant will consist of four power units with reactors with a total capacity of 4,800 Megawatts – this amount of energy can fully supply such a huge metropolis as Istanbul, where more than 15 million people live and work.