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1998/07/09
Subject: Adana depremi, nukleer santral-gazete
From: Uzman < uzman@urgentmail.com>
Message-ID: < 35A5523C.17578888@urgentmail.com>
Athens - The severe earthquake in Turkey's southeast last
Saturday looks set to re-ignite the controversy over the
government's plans to build the country's first nuclear power
station. The proposed site is only 130 kilometres west of the
quake's epicentre.
The project has been at the centre of a political feud in Turkey
for more than 25 years. Indeed, the first plans date back to the
euphoric days when the nuclear power industry could present its
technology as indisputably secure and clean.
The debate on the risks of nuclear power really got going after
the catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine, but
Turkish politicians have managed to ignore it. Indeed, the
project is supported by every major party, including the
opposition Islamists, who see the introduction of nuclear
technology to Turkey as a symbol of national prestige.
Opponents, however, fear that politicians and the powerful
generals who have had so much influence in the country's politics
over the decades really see the nuclear power plant as a backdoor
method to develop nuclear weapons technology. Ankara has firmly
denied that it has any such plans.
According to Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, electricity demand in
Turkey is growing by 8.5 per cent annually, making it necessary
for the country to increase generating capacity by 2,500
megawatts every year. And that, he has argued, will be impossible
without nuclear power.
Turkish and foreign opponents dispute the prime minister's
claims, however, with the environmental group Greenpeace saying
the purported gap between supply and demand does not really
exist. Moreover, critics say simple conservation measures,
modernisation of the distribution system and more efficient
management could increase the production from existing facilities
by 25 per cent within a short time.
These figures have been endorsed by the Turkish Chamber of
Electrical Engineers. Moreover, according to Greenpeace, Turkey
is only exploiting 29 per cent of its hydroelectric potential,
and there has been only a miniscule effort to use alternative
generation technologies such as wind, solar and geothermal power.
But the main reason the reactor has still not been built has less
to do with the experts' objections than with the massive protests
by local people, combined with the legal and financial
difficulties faced by the government.
Quite simply, the finance ministry in Ankara cannot come up with
the required three billion dollars, and plans to turn over
financing, construction and operations to a foreign firm -
Germany's Siemens is one of those interested - have been foiled
by objections from the constitutional court.
Now official circles in Ankara are racking their brains over new
financial models, but along with the basic issue of whether
Turkey should even have nuclear power the question of the plant's
location remains a major point of dispute.
Back in 1976 the Turkish nuclear energy authority, TAEK, approved
a site on Akkuyu Bay, not far from the city of Silifke. The
International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body for
monitoring nuclear installations, had no objections.
In fact, the IAEA's Hans-Friedrich Meyer told the Turkish Daily
News last year that there is no universally accepted standard for
the locating of nuclear power plants.
Geologists at Britain's Keele University confirmed in the late
1980s that there is a geological fault in the earth's crust
beneath the Mediterranean Sea just 25 kilometres outside Akkuyu
Bay which is capable of setting off a devastating earthquake.
Meyer, however, described the earthquake risk in the area as
"very slight" and said the proposed nuclear plant site had the
advantage of being "far from any populated area" - a curious
argument in view of the claims that the facility presents no
security risk.
The planned reactor would be built to a standard capable of
withstanding an earthquake reaching 6.5 on the Richter scale, the
IAEA spokesman said. Last weekend's earthquake, which claimed at
least 128 lives, came in at 6.3 on the scale.
Copyright - Frankfurter Rundschau 1998
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