Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Turkey this week to talk energy with the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

Energy companies in both countries agreed to a joint venture to build conventional electric power plants, and the Interfax news agency in Russia reported that Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin offered to reopen talks on Russian assistance to Turkey in building nuclear power reactors.

Greenpeace activists revealed nuclear matryoshka dolls of Putin and Erdogan in Ankara’s Kizilay Square. There are certainly surprises waiting inside the Russian-Turkey energy deal, not least Turkey losing energy security by relying on Russian nuclear fuel for any reactor built by Russia’s Atomstroiexport. Add to that the risks of cost and construction over runs, waste management problems, high decommissioning costs, and the distractions from renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programmes, and you have to ask, do we really want to see what’s inside Turkey’s nuclear matryoshka?

(In an attempt to sweeten the nuclear deal and bring down the extortionate construction costs, the consortium bidding to build Turkey’s first nuclear reactor ‘has revised down its price to $0.1235 per kilowatt hour from a previous price of more that $0.15’. That the announcement was made the day before Putin arrived in Ankara was, no doubt, a coincidence. $0.1235 per kilowatt hour is still five cents more expensive than the current average price of electricity in Turkey.)