Japan and France win Turkey nuclear deal

Turkey picks Japanese-French alliance to build its second nuclear power .

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Japanese-French alliance led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and French firm Areva will build the nuclear plant expected at a cost of some US$22 billion in the Black Sea province of Sinop.

“I believe we should limit the project timing to a maximum of seven years from the planning to the completion of the construction. We plan to get a minimum 15% of our power generation from nuclear energy by 2030,” Erdogan said.

The Japanese-French partners beat out its last remaining rival from China after South Korean and Canadian competitors dropped out of the race. They bring together Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Itochu with France’s GDF Suez to build the plant, which is planned to have a capacity of around 4,500-5,000 megawatts.

Four pressurized water nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of 4.5GW are planned to be constructed. The Japanese-Franco consortium had proposed installing Areva’s Atmea reactors.

These are 1,100 Mwe-capacity Atmea1, Generation III and pressurized water reactors developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Areva in their Atmea joint venture.

The construction of the plant in Sinop is to start in 2017. Turkey aims to have three nuclear plants operational by 2023 and to get a minimum 15% of its power generation from nuclear energy by 2030.