Russia will be able to build a nuclear power plant in Belarus without a tender once the two ex-Soviet republics sign an inter-governmental agreement on civilian nuclear power use, Russia's Rosatom said Wednesday.
Russia and Belarus agreed to sign the inter-governmental agreement in the first quarter of 2009 during talks on Wednesday between the Belarusian government and a Rosatom delegation.
"The signing of this agreement opens up the possibility for the parties to switch to direct negotiations on a contract for the construction of the first Belarusian nuclear power plant on a turnkey basis," Rosatom said.
Belarus plans to build a nuclear power plant with a capacity of 2,000 MW, with the first unit to come online in 2016 and the second in 2018. The plant is expected to have Generation III water-moderated reactors.
Belarus earlier announced a tender for the plant and sent invitations to Rosatom, French-German firm Areva, and U.S.-Japanese company Westinghouse-Toshiba to participate in the tender.
Rosatom and Areva eventually confirmed their intention to participate, while no official response was received from Westinghouse.
earlier related report
Turkey to scrap tender for nuclear power plant – paper
Ankara (RIA Novosti) – The Turkish government is likely to cancel a tender for the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant by rejecting a bid from a Russian reactor builder, a Turkish paper said on Wednesday.
Atomstroyexport, acting through a consortium with Russian power producer Inter RAO UES and Turkey's Park Teknik, is competing in a tender to build four nuclear reactors with a capacity of 1,200 MW each in Turkey.
According to the Milliyet newspaper, the Turkish side is dissatisfied with the high price of electricity generation offered by Atomstroyexport.
Last Monday, the Turkish energy company Tetas opened an envelope containing Atomstroyexport's bid, which offered a rate of 21.16 U.S. cents per kW/hr of electricity generation. It was also announced at the time that Atomstroyexport had submitted an adjusted bid, taking into account the current global financial crisis. However, the bid was returned to the Russian company, the paper said.
The tender will now almost certainly be scrapped. In this case, new tenders for the construction of the nuclear power plant will be held, the paper said.
According to the paper, initially about 10 international companies had displayed an interest in the tender, which had earlier been cancelled four times. But the terms of the tender eliminated all the bidders, except for the Russian-Turkish consortium, the paper said.
The Turkish authorities are planning to build the country's first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. By 2016, three nuclear power plants with total capacity of about 5,000 MW and worth a total of $7-8 billion are expected to appear in Turkey. The nuclear power plants are expected to use heavy-water reactors.
Source: RIA Novosti
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