BEIJING/TOKYO
Turkish Energy & Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said that Turkey would analyse strong and weak sides of Japan, South Korea and China which were willing to undertake the construction of nuclear power plant in Turkey's northern Sinop city.
In an interview with Japanese Nikkei Business daily, Yildiz said that those three countries seemed equal at the moment, but each of them had different strong sides, adding that the strong side of Japan was its high technology.
We are willing to decide as soon as possible which country will construct the power plant, Yildiz said.
The interview with Yildiz was made before April 20 -–the date Turkey also signed a protocol with Canadian Candu (Canada Deuterium Uranium) company regarding the nuclear power plant.
Yildiz said that Japan should speed up the reorganization in the country to gain back the time it lost following the accident in Fukushima.
Other nuclear power plant in Turkey was planned to be built in southern Mersin city. The project will be operated by Russia. 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. 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.
