Turkey will lose about $2 billion from its decision to cancel a tender for the construction of its first nuclear power plant, the newspaper Hurriyet reported on Sunday.

The decision to scrap the tender was made on Friday. A Turkish-Russian consortium was the sole bidder. Russia's Atomstroyexport, power producer Inter RAO UES, and Turkey's Park Teknik had sought to build four nuclear reactors with a capacity of 1,200 MW each in Turkey.

Turkey was reportedly unhappy with the high generation price offered by Atomstroyexport, which initially offered a rate of $0.21 per kW/hr generation, but then adjusted it downward to $0.153.

Turkey is planning to build its first NPP at Akkuyu, on the Mediterranean coast with capacity of 4,000 megawatts, which is expected to meet 8% of Turkey's power needs by 2020, and 20% by 2030.

The plans have met with strong opposition over environmental and security concerns.

Turkey relies on natural gas and oil imports to meet almost 67% of its energy needs, a figure that is expected to rise to 75% by 2020.

ANKARA, November 22 (RIA Novosti)