Russian state company Rosatom has stopped construction of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey, a project of 20 billion dollars, reported Wednesday a number of Turkish officials for Reuters. Turkey and Russia are going through the worst diplomatic crisis since the Cold War, after a Russian military plane was shot down on November 24 by the Turkish army.
Turkish officials have explained that Rosatom has not completed the construction contract and is not interested to do so due to the compensation clauses. Turkey is already screening other potential candidates for building the project, officials say.
In 2011, Turkey and the Russian company Rosatom signed an agreement to build and operate a 1,200 MW nuclear power plant with four reactors in the province of Mersin on the Mediterranean coast. Initially, Rosatom promised that the first reactor will be ready by 2019, but regulation roadblocks have slowed the progress of the project.
Also, analysts believe that the first nuclear power project in Turkey suffers from the economic problems of Russia as a result of sanctions imposed by Western countries.
“The timetable for the plant at Akkuyu was and remains completely unrealistic. In recent months the issue has become more complicated due to the deteriorating economic situation of Russia”, recently said Aaron Stein, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Turkey now relies mainly on fossil fuels like natural gas and oil, which accounts for almost half of the electricity production and costs about 50 billion dollars a year. Ankara imports 90.5% of its oil and 98.5% of the natural gas.
The Government in Ankara wants that, within a decade, at least five percent of electricity consumption to be provided by nuclear power. Besides the plant in Akkuyu, Turkey plans to build together with a Franco-Japanese consortium a second nuclear plant near the port of Sinop on the Black Sea coast.
Also, last fall, the American company Westinghouse Electric, part of the Japanese group Toshiba, has started preliminary talks with Turkish authorities regarding the construction of the third nuclear power plant in Turkey.
Agerpres