International firms are lining up for the revived project to build the country's first nuclear power station at Akkuyu on the southern Mediterranean coast, according to sources in the Energy & Natural Resources Ministry (MEED 20:9:96).

Tenders may even be invited for two nuclear power stations, say contracting sources. Firms taking varying degrees of interest in the project include France's Framatome, the US' ABB Combustion Engineering , Westinghouse and General Electric, Germany's Siemens, Japan's Hitachi and Mitsubishi Corporations, and a consortium of Canada's AECL with the UK's Kvaerner John Brown, and local contractors Guris, Gama and Bayindir, according to Energy Ministry sources.

US and Canadian companies were visited in early October by a Ministry delegation, while the plant was high on the agenda of economic issues discussed during recent talks in Paris by a high-level Foreign Ministry team. The Turkish Electricity Generation & Transmission Corporation (TEAS) expects to invite bids for the plant in November, and at the latest by the end of 1996. Only civils works documents relating to ancillary buildings remain to be completed, say the Ministry sources.

According to present plans, nine bidders will be able to choose from three technologies in their offers: the Canadian process called CANDU, also known as the pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR); the pressurised water reactor (PWR) and the boiling water reactor (BWR). Bids will be invited for plants of 600 MW and more at a cost of around $1,000 million, although the preferred capacity is about 1,000 MW.