Concrete pouring of two building foundation slab completed at Akkuyu NPP Unit 2

Büyükeceli, Mersin Province, Turkey. Concrete pouring of the reactor and turbine buildings foundation slabs at Unit 2 of Akkuyu NPP has been completed.
Concrete mix pouring of the foundation slab is thoroughly controlled. The quality of concrete mix is assessed in the laboratory. Then, a concrete sample is taken from the ready-mix truck at the laboratory outpost within the NPP site, with its temperature, cone slump and density being checked. Next, the decision to perform the concrete pouring is made.
To ensure the maximum strength of the slab, the foundation contains 2 451 tons of rebars, which is an equivalent to a third of the weight of all metal structures of the Eiffel Tower. A metal rigid frame is used to keep rebars in their specified position. More than 17 000 cubic meters of concrete have been poured into the reactor building's foundation. The area of the concrete slab is 6 864 square meters, while its height and depth are 2.6 meters and over 8 meters respectively.
The weight of the fully operational reactor building is about 470 000 tons. In other words, the foundation will reliably bear the weight that is twice as much as the largest cruise liner in the world. The reactor building foundation slab is also highly earthquake-resistant.
Alongside with reactor building foundation concreting, concrete pouring works at the turbine building foundation slab were performed.
The turbine building, where foundation concreting works were carried out, contains systems and equipment related to power generation: the turbine plant, the deaerator (the apparatus for water purification from trace gases), feedwater pumps and auxiliary equipment.  
The turbine building is a part of the secondary circuit where thermal steam power is converted into rotation energy and then into electric power in the generator. Turbine building safety requirements are as stringent as for any other NPP facility although the environment in the secondary circuit is not radioactive.
3,200 tons of reinforcement steel bars are embedded into the turbine building foundation. 363 supporting frames provide additional reinforcement of the slab.
The area of the concrete slab is 5,814 m2, and the basement depth falls in range from 12.5 m to the elevation of -7.1 m. The foundation slab height varies within the range of 5.4 m to 2 m.