Japan and France firms to build Turkey nuclear plant

Tokyo: Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France’s Areva are expected to win a $22 billion (Dh81 billion) contract to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey, a newspaper said on Thursday.

Turkey’s energy and natural resources ministry held talks with the Japanese government and company officials in Ankara on Wednesday and told them of its readiness to place the order from the two firms, the Nikkei business daily said.

Under the expected order, Mitsubishi and Areva will build four pressurised water reactors with a combined output of 4.5 million kilowatts in Sinop on the Black Sea, the newspaper said.

Construction of the country’s second nuclear power plant is to begin in 2017, with the first reactor coming on line by 2023, it said.

France’s GDF Suez will operate the facility while a joint venture involving Japanese and Turkish companies will sell the power to local utilities, it added.

A Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman declined to confirm the report.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan may meet in Turkey in early May with plans to agree on the promotion of nuclear reactor construction, Nikkei said.