Canceled nuclear tender disappoints Russians

News that Turkey is going to cancel the tender won by a Russian-led consortium to build a nuclear power plant has disappointed Russians.

Energy Minister Taner Yıldız signaled the cancellation of the nuclear power plant tender Monday. “We will not send the report related to the nuclear plant project to the Cabinet,” Yıldız told reporters.

“It is very disappointing for us because we expected progress in regard to energy cooperation between the two countries after the official visits,” said Natalia Ulchenko, a professor of economics and the head of the Turkish research department at the Oriental Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“We cannot understand the line of the Turkish side. I suppose there are some hesitations about the project, but the cancellation of the tender was unexpected,” Ulchenko told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in a phone interview Tuesday.

Earlier this year, Turkey and Russia signed agreements on a variety of subjects, including nuclear power and Turkish permission for a Russian pipeline to pass through its waters.

A commission of the Turkish State Council last week annulled the tender in which only one bidder – a consortium made up of Inter RAO, Atomstroiexport and Turkey's Park Teknik – participated. The tender was regarded by many as far from a real competition and failed to cover expectations related to power pricing.

“We will continue legal assessments,” Minister Yıldız said at the time. “It is too early to say that the tender is canceled.”

Yıldız said that objecting to the court decision would waste time and confirmed that Turkey would launch two new tenders within the next three to four months.

One plant is planned for Akkuyu, on the Mediterranean coast and a second one for Sinop, on the Black Sea. The ministry is aiming to have nuclear energy meet 20 percent of the country’s power consumption for the next 20 years.

Russia, however, has not given up its bid to construct nuclear plants in Turkey. “As far as I know, we are going to participate in the two tenders,” Professor Ulchenko said. “Even after this disappointment, we still want to be in this project.”

“We are closely following the developments,” said a Russian diplomat contacted by the Daily News. “It is not right to comment for the time being, due to the sensitivity of the issue. We have not yet received any notification from the officials.”

Nuclear energy a Turkish dream for more than 40 years

Turkey began planning its own nuclear power plant in 1960, when the United States helped establish a nuclear research reactor in Istanbul’s Küçükçekmece district, within the scope of Cold War-era cooperation between the two countries. Plans to build a nuclear plant in Akkuyu, in the Mersin area, were first discussed in 1974, but the government failed to realize the project.

In 1983, then-Prime Minister Turgut Özal brought the project onto the agenda again and called on the private sector to invest in it, but no one showed interest.

Following the Chernobyl accident in 1987, Turkish officials abolished all departments and projects related to nuclear energy.

In 1998, the government again launched a tender for the country’s first nuclear power plant, but two years later, then-Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit confirmed that the project had been shelved due to financial difficulties. The third tender was conducted in September 2008, but as Yıldız confirmed Monday, it has failed once again.