Alliance of Japan, France firms wins Turkey's second nuke plant bid

An alliance of Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France's Areva has won a bid to build Turkey' s second nuclear power plant, Turkish Daily News reported Thursday. The reported quoted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying that his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe will sign the agreement of the 21-billion-U.S. dollar project on Friday during his visit to Turkey. The 5,000-megawatt nuclear plant which will be built in the Black Sea province of Sinop, some 700 km east of Istanbul, is supposed to relieve Turkey's dependance on importing energy. During the two-year bidding, companies from China, Japan, South Korea and Canada were the short-listed contenders for the final race. In order to win the multi-billion-dollar tender, the Japanese and French companies formed a joint bid.