Turkey in the Straw

Bianet, a Turkish news outlet that publishes in English, reports that the Global Action Group, "among them many well-known singers, actors and intellectuals," are not too happy that Turkey is considering building a nuclear energy plant.

Here are their complaints. Take a deep breath; you've heard it all before.

Every nuclear power plant creates waste, and no country has yet to find a satisfactory solution for that waste. It represents an ecological problem, whether it be buried or thrown into the sea.

Nuclear power plants are dangerous. Like everywhere else, people in Turkey still remember the disaster of Chernobyl. Should there be a leak in a power plant, all living beings in a wide radius would be affected, people would die or become ill, and ecosystems would be wiped out.

Nuclear power plants are not sensible investments. While it takes around 5 billion dollars to build one, building delays can make the costs spiral. For Turkey, wind and solar energy are alternatives which would make financial and environmental sense. They are not being exploited sufficiently at the moment, but that is no excuse for not rethinking the country’s energy policy.

Instead of nuclear power plants, Turkey needs energy efficiency and conservation.

The second point has a apocalyptic zeal that's fairly entertaining if not very plausible. Throw in a giant lizard and the circle of nuclear life is complete.

---

A closer look at Bianet suggests that Turkey, or at least Bianet, is troubled by nuclear energy on many fronts.

See here:

The Chamber of Electrical Engineers, (EMO), said they object to plans to build a nuclear energy plant, brought onto agenda by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi Guler. "Nobody has the right to drag Turkey into new disasters and to turn the country into a garbage dump for the nuclear plant market lobbyists," said EMO.

And here:

The Turkey Environmental Platform (TÜRÇEP) has announced that "there will be no votes for those who support the building of nuclear power stations, those who close their ears to our demands for decarbonisation, those who ignore renewable energy and possible energy savings."

Of course, it's hard to say from these articles how broad-based the opposition is in Turkey and how much is being whipped up by the media there.

Here's some background on what Turkey is doing:

The Turkish Electricity Trading and Contracting Co. Inc. (TETAŞ) will accept the bids, after which the Turkish Atomic Energy Agency (TAEK) will conduct an inspection to ascertain if the applicants meet the necessary technical and financial requirements. TETAŞ will select one company among the bidders and will submit the name of this company to the Cabinet for approval.

The ministry will assign the winning company suitable land free of charge. In addition to this, the company will also be given a guarantee that the state will purchase electricity from it until 2031 at a specified minimum price to prevent operating losses.

See the site for a full article. Nuclear energy may may not have created any tumult beyond the usual suspects, but if any of our Turkish friends visits the site, perhaps they can comment further.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog