ANALYSIS -Turkey set for first nuke power plant

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

ANALYSIS  -Turkey set for first nuke power plant

ANKARA, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Energy-hungry Turkey appears eager 
to finalise a tender by the end of this month to build its 
controversial first nuclear power plant, ending a three-decade-long 
saga fraught by protests and cancellations.  

``We have decided to intensify our efforts to conclude work on the 
nuclear power plant tender,'' Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit told 
reporters on Thursday night after a six-hour meeting of government 
coalition leaders.  

``The government has made a decision to go ahead with the 
nuclear power plant,'' he said.  

Turkey, which cancelled two previous tenders in the past three 
decades, collected bids for the plant, to be located near the 
Mediterranean coastal village of Akkuyu, from three international 
consortia in 1997.  

The companies agreed to extend their bids to December 31, 1999, 
following a request by the government, which failed to finalise the 
tender assessment by October 15, 1999, the original deadline put 
forward by the consortia.  

Energy Minister Cumhur Ersumer has said if the government failed 
to award the tender again, ``this will give the world the message 
that Turkey will never be able to build any nuclear power plant in 
the future.''  

Turkish state electricity producer TEAS, which will be operator, 
said technical assessment of the project was completed and it was 
now up to the government to move.  

ANTI-NUCLEAR CAMPAIGN

The project has been severely criticised by local residents, 
environmentalists, the influential chamber of electrical engineers 
and some politicians.  

The Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986 
encouraged such groups to anti-nuclear campaign.  

A strong earthquake that killed about 18,000 people in 
northwestern Turkey in August also raised questions about the 
location of the plant, which some experts said lay near a seismic 
fault line.  

Ethem Torunoglu, head of the Chamber of Environmental 
Engineers, said Turkey was criss-crossed by active fault lines and 
there were legal barriers to building the plant.  

``A fault line is passing some 25 km (16-mile) to the east of the 
plant site. Also, the project does not have a key document, called 
the environmental assessment report, for it to go ahead,'' he told 
Reuters  

But a housing ministry map suggested the site was in one of the 
safest locations in terms of exposure to earthquakes.

Thursday's meeting was prompted by a series of gas and power 
cuts in Istanbul, Ankara and Bursa this week after gas pressure in 
the pipeline from Russia dropped.  

Melda Keskin, head of Greenpeace's Mediterranean Energy 
Campaign, told a news conference the timing of the power cuts 
was significant. ``They are trying to scare people off by using 
darkness and cold weather in order to conclude the nuclear 
tender,'' she said.  

Turkey, which will consume 117.3 billion kiloWatt-hours (kWh) of 
power this year against 115.3 billion kWh generated, imports 
electricity from Iran, Georgia and Bulgaria to make up for the 
shortage.  

BIG NAMES AMONG BIDDERS

The project is expected to cost up to $5 billion and is planned for 
completion in 2007. The bidding consortium is led by U.S. White 
Westinghouse (NYSE:WAB - news), Canada's AECL and French-
German NPI (Nuclear Power International).  

The best bidder in terms of per unit costs energy generation is NPI, 
which includes Siemens Framatome, Alstom Campenon Bernard, 
Hochtief , Turkey's Garanti Koza, Simko, STFA and Tekfen.  

Its first bid is for a 1,482-MegaWatt (MW) plant that will generate 
power for 2.56 cents per kWh and cost $2.393 billion. The second 
alternative is a 2,964-MW, $4.48 billion plant that will produce 
power at 2.28 cents per kWh.  

Canada's AECL has Anglo-Norwegian Kvaerner John Brown , 
Hitachi , Turkey's Guris, Gama and Bayindir as partners. The 
consortium proposed a 1,339 MW, $2.572 billion plant and pledged 
a unit cost of 3.3 cents/kWh. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
ICN Biomedicals, Inc.				E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           
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Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Personal Website:  http://www.geocities.com/scperle
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com
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