Turkey to hold nuclear power plant talks with China

Turkey's energy and natural resources minister said on Monday that Turkey would hold nuclear power plant negotiations with China. Taner Yildiz said Turkey would hold nuclear power plant negotiations with China, as well as Japan and South Korea. "We can carry out nuclear power plant negotiations on three separate models with three separate countries," Yildiz told reporters in China. Yildiz is accompanying Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to China. "I can say that we will be close to an agreement with any country that can take the lead in particularly nuclear power plant project in Sinop," Yildiz said. Yildiz also said there were no problems in talks with the Russian Federation regarding the nuclear power plant to be constructed in Akkuyu town of the southern province of Mersin. Turkey plans to build two nuclear power plants in the next decade. In May 2010, Turkey and Russia signed a deal for construction of Turkey's first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, a small town on the Mediterranean coast, which is expected to cost about 20 billion USD. Russian state-owned atomic power company ROSATOM is likely to start building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in 2013 and the first reactor is planned to generate electricity in 2018. Turkey has been engaged in talks with Japan since last year to build country's second nuclear power plant in the Black Sea coastal province of Sinop in the north. However, talks were interrupted after the massive earthquake that hit Japan last March. Japan's magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima. Turkey and Japan resumed talks on construction of Turkey's second nuclear power plant in country's north coast in July 2011. Talks are also under way with South Korea.