23 November 2009 - Turkey will retender a project to build the country's first nuclear power plant after it cancelled an accepted bid from Russia's Atomstroyexport.

The Turkish Electricity Trading and Contracting Company (TETAŞ) cancelled a 2008 tender won by a consortium led by Atomstroyexport, Russia's state nuclear giant, power producer Inter RAO UES, and Turkey's Park Teknik to build four nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 4800 MW at the Mediterranean town of Akkuyu.

The tender had been under fire since it emerged that the consortium was the sole bidder and offered above-market prices for supplying electricity to the Turkish grid.

Turkey was reportedly unhappy with the high generation price offered by Atomstroyexport, which initially offered a rate of $0.21 per kW/hr generation, but then adjusted it downward to $0.153.

Sources close to the Energy Ministry say the ministry has already started plans to restart the tender for the plant in Mersin's Akkuyu district, on the Mediterranean coast, and launch a second tender to build and operate a nuclear power plant in Sinop on the Black Sea in 2010.

Turkey will lose about $2bn from its decision to cancel the tender, the newspaper Hurriyet reported.

Critics say Akkuyu is close to a seismic fault line, pointing at a powerful earthquake that killed more than 140 people in the neighbouring province of Adana in 1998.