Toshiba, Westinghouse and State Power Investment Corporation- were supposed to work together for the third nuclear power plant in İgneada, Thrace region. İn 2016, Westinghouse publicly announced, during the International Nuclear Power Plant Summit in Istanbul that China will financially support the Project under the technical management of the US company.
The consortium was expected to conclude negotiations concerning four reactors with the Turkish government this year for the amount of 17 Billion US Dollars. But Toshiba Corp sacked Westinghouse Electric Co’s chairman two days before the U.S. nuclear engineering subsidiary filed for bankruptcy protection last week, as the Japanese firm tries to draw a line under the travails of a business that has cost it billions of dollars. Danny Roderick was replaced as Westinghouse’s chairman by Mamoru Hatazawa, chief of Toshiba’s nuclear division, on March 27, two days before the Chapter 11 filing.
Jeffrey Benjamin, responsible for delivering on new power plant projects, and who was involved in the Turkish project also left the company. New projects division now fall under David Durham, a former GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy executive, who joined Westinghouse in 2015.
During the recent International Nuclear Power Plant Summit in Istanbul, SPIC came with its large supply chain, and mentioned Westinghouse as a technology supplier, not as a partner. The country believes it can export the CAP1400, the upgraded version of the AP1000, which is a Chinese innovation.
If SPIC decided to become the exclusive supplier to Turkey, it is foreseen that it will try to bypass any licensing fee to be paid to Westinghouse under the AP1000 agreement and build only the CAP1400. SPIC already invited the Turkish industry to visit its site during the nuclear power summit this April in Beijing.
Note: SPIC operates in 36 countries from Japan to Brazil with 107 GW capacity of energy. The total assets of the in these countries is 775 billion yuan (116 billion dollars).
