Turkey and South Korea will decide on whether or not to launch negotiations on an intergovernmental agreement on construction of a nuclear power plant in August, bureaucrats said on Tuesday.

Executives of Turkish and South Korean energy ministries said Turkish-South Korean joint working group would hold its last meeting in August.

The two countries would decide whether or not to launch negotiations on an intergovernmental agreement on construction of a nuclear power plant in Turkey according to the results of that meeting, the executives said.

Turkey and South Korea set up a joint working group under a joint declaration between Electricity Generation Corporation (EUAS) and Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) to construct a nuclear power plant in the northern province of Sinop.

The working group held its fourth meeting in the Turkish capital of Ankara earlier on Tuesday.

After the meeting, KEPCO's executive vice president Jun Yeon Byun paid a visit to Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz and briefed him on the technical studies of the joint working group.

In March, Turkey signed a cooperation protocol with South Korea to establish a nuclear energy power plant in Sinop.

South Korea actually has 20 nuclear power plants, and is constructing eight others in its territories. It aims to raise its nuclear energy to 40 percent till 2020.

The South Korean company wants to exports its nuclear technology to Turkey after it won a 20-billion deal in December 2009 to build four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates by 2020, which made it the sixth largest nuclear technology exporter in the world following United States, France, Russia, Canada and Japan.

AA