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ANKARA, June 29 (AFP) - The Turkish government was warned Monday of a potential catastrophe if it went ahead with plans for a nuclear power plant in the area hit by a lethal earthquake at the weekend.
Calls for abandoning or reviewing the project came from Turkish
doctors, engineers, and one of the scientists who granted the
license for the plant as well as the international environmental
organization Greenpeace.
In the next two months the government is expected to announce
the results of international bidding for a plant to be built in
Akkuyu in the Mersin area, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of
the quake-hit region of Adana.
A new toll on Monday said that 116 people were killed and 1,500
injured in the quake, which measured a strong 6.3 on the open-ended
Richter scale and shook not only Adana province but neighboring
areas including Mersin.
It was also felt in Cyprus.
"Today it is definitely known that the Ecemis fault line runs 25
kilometers (15 miles) from the location of the Akkuyu plant," said
Kamer Gulbeyaz, who heads an association of engineers in Mersin.
"The risks of a radioactive leak would be high in the event of a quake, even of minimal magnitude. If we want to avoid a total nuclear catastrophe, we must abandon the project," he warned.
Melda Keskin, spokeswoman for the Turkish branch of the Greenpeace environmental organization, told AFP that "the earthquake confirms the danger we have been warning of for years."
The site was licensed for the plant by the Turkish authorities as early as 1976, Keskin said. "The fault line was only discovered years later and thus not taken into account for the license."
Reports prepared in the 1970s considered Mersin among the safest
seismic areas in Turkey, but studies carried out in 1991 stressed
that the Ecemis fault line, around 20 kilometers east of the plant
site, is active.
Professor Tolga Yarman, one of the three scientists who had granted the license for the plant, called for a review.
"In light of recent scientific data, we must check again if the
location for the future plant is safe or not. If necessary, we must
reconsider the decision to build it," he added.
Leziz Onaran, chairman of the Turkish association of doctors for
peace and the environment, said: "This warning from nature must be
taken seriously."
In February, Ulrich Fischer, the president of the Franco-German
consortium Nuclear Power International (NPI), one of the three
groups bidding for the project, said he would live in the area of
the plant.
"I am ready to build the home where I will spend my retirement right near the Akkuyu nuclear plant," he said. "The Turkish authorities told us the region is safe for building the plant."
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