ISTANBUL // Turkey will press on with plans to build the country’s first nuclear power plants despite the latest nuclear accidents in Japan, a decision the opposition and environmental activists say is irresponsible in the face of widespread earthquake risks in Turkey.
“We will not give up on our determination in the nuclear field,” Taner Yildiz, Turkey’s energy minister, said this week.
The minister added that the reactors causing trouble in Japan after last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami were outdated. “It is a technology from 40 years ago,” the minister said. “Today’s safety systems are much more advanced.”
The minister’s statement came as other countries, including Germany and Switzerland, announced they were reviewing their positions regarding the use of nuclear power in the light of events in Japan.
Plans to build nuclear facilities in Turkey go back several decades but gathered fresh momentum in recent years. In 2009, Ankara sent out a tender for the construction of the country’s first reactor, which is scheduled to go online between 2016 and 2019.
Opponents of nuclear power say the risk of earthquakes in almost all of Turkey makes the technology too dangerous. Smaller quakes are registered in the country almost every day, and tens of thousands of people have died from massive quakes in the past few decades. Close to 20,000 people died in an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale in the north-west of the country in 1999. A quake measuring a 4.6 magnitude shook the eastern Turkish city of Van late on Monday. There were no reports of injuries or damages. (The moment magnitude scale has generally replaced the Richter scale, though the scales are comparable.)
Countries around the world were taking a new and critical look at nuclear technology, Pinar Aksogan, an energy expert of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, said in a statement. “And what is our energy minister Taner Yildiz doing? He keeps the nuclear crisis hidden from the public and acts as if everything is under control.” She accused the minister of “putting all of our lives at risk”.
A small group of demonstrators gathered at Taksim Square in the centre of Istanbul this week to protest against the government’s determination to build nuclear reactors. “We do not want nuclear power plants,” they shouted.
Ankara argues that Turkey needs nuclear energy to help fuel the country’s rapidly growing economy, to avoid environmental pollution and to reduce dependence on natural gas imports, mostly from Russia and Iran. About half of Turkey’s energy needs are met by natural gas and roughly one third by coal-fuelled power plants. Turkey’s economy has doubled in size in the past 10 years and is expected to grow by 4.5 per cent this year.
Environmentalists say Turkey should do much more to boost renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power and could make its energy system more efficient by taking steps towards more safe energy sources and to avoiding energy waste.
Turkey’s power plant is scheduled to be built in Akkuyu, near Mersin on the Mediterranean coast, while another one is planned to be built in Sinop on the Black Sea. Russian companies are to build the reactor in Akkuyu, while negotiations with Japanese companies to build the plant in Sinop are ongoing. The projects are expected to cost around US$20 billion (Dh73.4bn) each.
Mr Yildiz, the energy minister, conceded that there were lessons to be learnt from recent events in Japan and that those lessons would form part of the negotiations for Turkey’s reactors. But he stressed that nuclear power would be safe despite the risk of earthquakes and that the situation in Japan was not comparable to conditions in Turkey.
“Of course there is no danger of a tsunami here,” the minister said. “And we do not expect an earthquake here, even if one occurs, God forbid, to be that strong,” he said in reference to the 9.0-magnitude quake in Japan last week.
Because the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP, seems determined to push ahead with its nuclear plans, the debate will probably heat up further before parliamentary elections scheduled for June 12. Ali Riza Ozturk, an opposition deputy in parliament representing Mersin, the city near the planned nuclear site of Akkuyu, called on Mr Yildiz to explain why he wants to stick with the project despite the risks.
“Does the minister have firm evidence that there will be no earthquake in Akkuyu, or is Mersin not important to the AKP government?” Mr Ozturk asked in written questions addressed to Mr Yildiz, which under parliamentary rules the minister is obliged to answer.
Some observers also voiced doubts about the safety of the Akkuyu site. Necdet Pamir, an energy expert, told Vatan newspaper that the permission to build a nuclear reactor in Akkuyu was issued in the 1970s, at a time when seismologists were unaware of a tectonic fault just 20km to 25km to the north-east of the site. “After the events in Japan we have to fundamentally revisit the permission for the nuclear power plant at Akkuyu.”
tseibert@thenational.ae
via Full: Turkey sticking to nuclear plans despite Japan disaster – The National.