Rhino: Agencies – Turkey is in talks with the United States about building large nuclear power plants and small modular reactors, Yusuf Ceylan, a senior Turkish energy ministry official, said on Tuesday.

“The United States is showing serious interest in Turkey’s goal of increasing its nuclear power capacity and building new power plants,” Ceylan told Reuters at a conference on nuclear power plants.

“We are negotiating with the US for large power plants and small modular reactors. This is a declaration of intent”.

Jeff Flake, the US ambassador to Turkey, told Reuters last month that Ankara had spoken with us and others about building small modular reactors.

“We are working with them to try to minimize their dependence (on Russia) in any way possible,” he said.

Turkey plans to build three nuclear plants with four reactors and equip them with SMRs with a total capacity of 20,000 megawatts to diversify its electricity production mix.