The construction of the nuclear power plant in Turkey will start next spring, the country’s Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

“We want to break ground on the Akkuyu nuclear plant in March or April,” Yıldız said, at a meeting where he also hosted Turkish students set to travel to Russia for nuclear engineering training.

The nuclear plant, which is to be located near Akkuyu in the southern province of Mersin on the Mediterranean coast, will require investment worth $22 billion, Yıldız added.

While the plant’s foundations will be dug in 2015, construction of its four reactors will not begin until 2016. The plant is planned to become partly operational in 2020 and fully operational in 2023, the 100-year anniversary of the Turkish Republic.

In 2011, Russian company Rosatom signed an agreement with the Turkish Energy Ministry to build and operate the nuclear power plant.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s second planned nuclear plant was awarded to a Japanese-French consortium last May.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Itochu Corporation, with France’s GDF Suez, will build the 4,800 MW plant in the Black Sea coastal city of Sinop, at an estimated cost of $22 billion.

Japan is also bidding to build a third plant.