ANKARA
Turkey's energy and natural resources minister said on Friday that Turkey would hold talks on construction of nuclear power plant with Japan, South Korea and China.
Taner Yildiz defined his visit to China as fruitful, and said Turkey would hold negotiations with Japan, South Korea and China on construction of a nuclear power plant.
"We will prefer conditions of the country which is for our bests interests," Yildiz told a press conference in Ankara.
Yildiz said ministry executives would visit China in the following week to discuss details, adding that the nuclear power plant would be built in line with standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Union (EU).
Turkey plans to build two nuclear power plants in the next decade.
In May 2010, Turkey and Russia signed a deal for construction of Turkey's first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, a small town on the Mediterranean coast, which is expected to cost about 20 billion USD. Russian state-owned atomic power company ROSATOM is likely to start building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in 2013 and the first reactor is planned to generate electricity in 2018.
Turkey has been engaged in talks with Japan since last year to build country's second nuclear power plant in the Black Sea coastal province of Sinop in the north. However, talks were interrupted after the massive earthquake that hit Japan last March. Japan's magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima.
Turkey and Japan resumed talks on construction of Turkey's second nuclear power plant in country's north coast in July 2011.
Talks are also under way with South Korea.
