By Can Sezer
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey is in talks with the United States on building large-scale nuclear power plants and small modular reactors (SMR), a senior Turkish Energy Ministry official said on Tuesday.
“The US is showing serious interest in Turkey’s goal of increasing its nuclear power capacity and building new power plants,” official Yusuf Ceylan told Reuters at a nuclear power conference.
Asked about the projects under discussion, he said: “We can consider the areas of existing power plants or new power plants.”
“We are negotiating with the US about both large-scale power plants and small modular reactors. This is a statement of intent,” he said.
Jeff Flake, the US ambassador to Turkey, told Reuters last month that Ankara was “talking to us and others about (building) small modular reactors”.
“We are working with them to try to reduce their dependence (on Russia) in every way possible,” he added.
Ceylan said negotiations are continuing with South Korea and Russia over a second nuclear power plant in the Black Sea region of Sinop, and with China’s SPIC over a third nuclear power plant in the Thrace region of northwestern Turkey.
Construction of Turkey’s first 4,800 MW nuclear power plant by Russia’s Rosatom continues in Akkuyu in the Turkish Mediterranean.
Turkey plans to build three nuclear power plants with four reactors and supplement them with SMRs for a total of 20,000 MW of generation capacity to diversify its electricity generation mix.
