“They don’t have a financing problem. If they agree they will build it,” said the Turkish energy official, adding that a visit to Beijing this week by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, would shed more light on prospects for the project.
More than a year after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, as nuclear programmes in developed countries such as Germany and Japan have been slowed or shut down, emerging economies have become the focus for nuclear companies competing for new contracts.
While China is a relative newcomer to this game, having built overseas reactors only in Pakistan, the state-backed nuclear groups China National Nuclear Corporation and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation have ambitions to become global suppliers of nuclear energy and appear to be making some progress in emerging economies. China is the world’s biggest builder of new nuclear reactors.
Because Beijing is not demanding state guarantees for the Turkish projects, its approach contrasts with South Korea, whose negotiations over the plant have previously broken down over Seoul’s insistence on such support.