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Nuclear tender had flaws, but we are still determined, says minister
The tender to construct Turkey's first nuclear energy power plant in Mersin's Akkuyu district was held in September 2008. A joint venture composed of Russia's AtomStroyExport, Inter Rao UES JSC and the Ciner Group's Park Teknik was the sole bidder in the tender for the construction and operation of the nuclear plant for 15 years.
Speaking to a group of reporters in Antalya on Wednesday, the minister shared his views on the nuclear tender "frankly and in full transparency."
"A high price bid by just a single participant seems to be a problem. If we are not content with the current price, that means there is a serious problem. We have to examine this carefully to understand if this problem stems from us or from the bidding companies. I am speaking on this issue so evidently, succinctly and frankly to say that the number bid by the consortium is much higher than the average electricity generation cost in Turkey, and we are not happy with that," the Yıldız argued.
The minister reiterated that the construction of the nuclear plant is a must, but it has to be at a "reasonable price."
Yıldız avoided giving a definitive reply to a question from a reporter who asked if the government intended to cancel the current tender and start the process over, saying, "It is quite normal to keep both 'yes' and 'no' next to each other on the table [until the process is finalized].”
The reporters were especially interested in the government's recent decision to become a partner in the nuclear power plant with a stake of up to 25 percent, a decision which drew intense criticism since it was not included in the original bid specifications. A reporter commented that "the public share option was not included in the initial tender conditions, although the interested companies were pressuring the government to allow it. So, naturally, the whole tender process must be canceled since you introduced it at the expense of those companies which opted to stay out of the tender due to the absence of the public share option."
Yıldız responded to the reporter's comment, saying: "Let's look at the issue either from a proactive or pragmatic perspective. If the public share, whether it is 15 percent or 25 percent and whether it is at the beginning or at the end of the tender, is causing the price to fall, it is an important factor. If some risks are to be eliminated with the public share, then I have to adopt it for the sake of my country's interests."
He recalled a recently passed law that allows the establishment of partnerships between the state and companies operating nuclear power plants and said this law must be assessed separately from the tender process. However, in response to another reporter's question, the minister admitted that if the public share option was included in the original bid specifications, there would have been more companies submitting bids in the tender and the price would have been less.
The consortium submitted a bid of 21.16 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) on Jan. 20 but had to decrease it to 15.35 cents in early February in an attempt to prevent its bid from collapsing. But the lower bid was still far from satisfying Turkish authorities.
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