Turkey puts nuke power plans on indefinite hold

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Turkey puts nuke power plans on indefinite hold

ANKARA, July 25 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on 
Tuesday that Turkey was postponing plans to build its first nuclear 
power plant to wait for nuclear technology to improve and for the 
country's finances to stabilise. 

Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Ecevit said 
Turkey had scrapped a long-delayed tender to building a multi-billion-
dollar nuclear power plant on the Mediterranean coast near Akkuyu. 

But he stressed that Turkey was not ruling out a possible return to 
nuclear power as a means to meet the country's growing energy needs. 

"It would be wrong for us to abandon building a nuclear power plant 
but it would be right to delay it for a while and wait for new 
technology in this area," Ecevit told reporters after a cabinet 
meeting in Ankara. 

Ecevit also said that the multi-billion-dollar cost of the planned 
nuclear plant in southern Turkey could throw the country's IMF-backed 
economic reform package off track. 

"The cancellation of the Akkuyu tender does not mean we have 
abandoned nuclear energy, once the (economic) stability programme has 
reached its aims, nuclear plants will come back onto the agenda," he 
said. 

Turkey's treasury had refused to provide financing guarantees to the 
Akkuyu project, arguing the terms of Turkey's three-year $4 billion 
stand-by accord with the International Monetary Fund forbids such 
large guarantees. 

The project has also faced environmentalist opposition focusing on 
concerns that the planned site lay too close to active earthquake 
fault lines and that it might deter tourists from visiting Turkey's 
Mediterranean coastline. 

Ecevit said such concerns were unfounded and were not the reasons for 
the decision to delay Turkey's entrance into nuclear energy 
production. 

Turkey plans to increase imports of natural gas as a central way of 
meeting its rapidly growing power needs. 

"As a country committed to large numbers of natural gas and hydro-
electric power plants, like other OECD countries, it is presently 
unnecessary for us to direct ourselves to nuclear energy. It is 
undesirable economically," said. 

He also cited a report by Turkish power authority TEAS saying that 
most of the Western world had either slowed down or stopped their 
programme of nuclear power plants. 

U.S. Westinghouse Electric Co (a unit of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd 
BNFL), Canada's AECL and Franco-German Nuclear Power International 
(NPI) competed to build the $2.5-$4.5 billion plant on Turkey's 
Mediterranean coast. 

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