TOKYO, April 4 - Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France's Areva have won an order to build Turkey's second nuclear power plant - a project that is expected to cost some $22bn, the Nikkei business daily said on Thursday, citing Japanese and Turkish sources.
Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Ministry has informed the Japanese government and corporate officials of the decision to award the deal to build four pressurized water nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of about 4.5GW at Sinop on the Black Sea, the report said.
The Turkish government has approached Japan about a summit meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan in early May, after which it is likely to officially grant preferred negotiating rights to the Mitsubishi-Areva consortium, it added.
A Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman declined to comment.
Turkey, which is likely to overtake Britain as Europe's third-biggest electricity consumer within a decade, plans to build several nuclear plants over the next 10 years to reduce its dependence on imported oil and gas.
Construction is set to start in 2017, with the first reactor slated to come online by 2023, and France's GDF Suez SA will operate the plant, it added.
Turkey had also been in talks with companies from Canada, South Korea and China regarding the planned Sinop plant.
Russia's Rosatom will build Turkey's first nuclear power station and start construction in mid-2015. It expects the facility to start producing electricity in 2019, its deputy general manager told Reuters in February. That $20bn plant at Mersin Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast will also have four power units with installed capacity of 4.8GW.