In Turkey the ruling AK-Party government struck a deal with the Russians on international level in order to circumvent a national verdict against the available nuclear act shaped by this AKP government. This intergovernmental agreement will surpass and nullify the national court decision against the current nuclear law and regulation.
Russian and Turkish heads of state have signed an intergovernmental agreement for Rosatom to build Turkey's first nuclear power plant of four 1200 MWe VVER reactors, at Akkuyu, on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Rosatom, through Atomstroyexport and Inter RAO UES, will finance the project and start off with 100% equity. Longer-term they intend to retain at least 51% of the company which will build, own and operate the plant. This will be Russia's first foreign plant built on that basis. The Turkish firm Park Teknik and state generation company Elektrik Uretim AS (EUAS) are expected to take up significant shares in the US$ 20 billion project. Meanwhile, EUAS will provide the site. Earlier plans faltered on guaranteeing the cost of power. Under the agreement the Turkish Electricity Trade & Contract Corporation (TETAS) will buy a fixed proportion of the power at US$ 12.35 cents/kWh for 15 years, or to 2030. The remainder of the power will be sold on the open market. The Atomstroyexport-led consortium was allowed to resubmit its bid after its initial bid of an offtake guarantee of euro-cents 21.16/kWh was rejected as too high. The current price on Turkey’s nascent power market is around 4 to 14 euro-cents per kWh. (5-17 dollarcents) The consortium’s revised bid of euro-cent 15.35/kWh was still under negotiation when a Turkish court ruling forced the tender to be scrapped.
Sofar the technical details of the deal. We wrote to several people in Turkey for an article analyzing the deal and the political situation. This is one of the replies:
"I am not really very enthusiastic to write yet another "black and blue" article on the ultra liberal approach of the Turkish government to implement nuclear energy among all the other gloom and doom concerning other political issues.
That is to say, we as a country are going through political dark ride, and nuclear plants' ghostly facade is just another one of horror scenes among the many stomach churning road bends we keep on taking, each and every new day.
After about 10 years of AK-Party majority rule with no restraint from opposition parties or strong citizen checks "the ride" is unrelentingly building up social pressure. And it is for sure that we will not get off anywhere near where we boarded the AKP ultra ride initially, but when and where it stops, a totally different terrain will have taken shape beneath our shaky knees.
The twists and turns of every day politics, the developments on very diverse topics as homeland security, foreign relations, economic crisis, urban development, plunder of natural resources, future health of secularity - the threat of tearing down of constitutional judiciary structure... all add up to a general sickening nausea for citizens concerned not with their immediate benefits and profits but with the well being of the society and of future generations..
We can definitely talk about an authoritarian regime being molded out of the per se democratic parliamentary structure…. the approach of the state and the citizens alike have shifted towards a "laissez-faire" state of mind and this already takes its toll on the environment and socio-cultural, sociopolitical structures.
This might explain the stubborn advances of the AK-Party government which went out of its way to struck a deal with the Russians on international level in order to circumvent a national verdict against the available nuclear act shaped by this AKP government. This intergovernmental agreement will surpass and nullify the national court decision against the current nuclear law and regulation.
As NGO's we have exhausted our strategies. This international deal will be proposed in the coming weeks to the Turkish parliament and most probably will be passed and accepted without even due discussion, with majority vote.
Our hands are tied and for what are they tied? To give a nicely packed military souvenir in the Mediterranean to Mr. President Putin. The Russians give out cheerful interviews as it is their very first nuclear power plant enterprise on foreign soil . The whole thing will be built and owned by our northern neighbor .The very same Russia who provides for more than 60% of our natural gas imports. Just crazy! So crazy that one cannot even draw upon any logical thinking process and make logical comments to write up an article..."
Source: WNA Weekly Digest, 13 May 2010 / Nucleonics Week, 27 May 2010 / and personal email 14 June