Turkey’s energy & natural resources minister said on Monday that the nuclear power plant planned to be constructed in southern Turkey would be one of the strongest buildings in the country.
Taner Yildiz said Turkey had reviewed security parameters regarding a planned nuclear power plant, and raised the number of those parameters to 88.
"The nuclear power plant will be one of the strongest buildings in Turkey," Yildiz said during his meeting with Prince Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Minister of Economy & Foreign Trade Jeannot Krecke.
Yildiz’s remarks came after a nuclear crisis in Japan caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami. The 9.0 quake and tsunami set off the nuclear problems by knocking out power to cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on the northeast coast. Since then, four of the troubled plant’s six reactor units have seen fires, explosions or partial meltdowns. The unfolding crises have led to power shortages in Japan, forced factories to close, sent shockwaves through global manufacturing and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.
In May 2010, Turkey and Russia signed a deal for construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, a small town on the Mediterranean coast, which is expected to cost about 20 billion USD. Russian state-owned atomic power company ROSATOM is likely to start building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in 2013 and the first reactor is planned to generate electricity in 2018.
Russia will build four 1,200 megawatt units on Akkuyu site, and run the power plant for 60 years. Turkish state-owned electricity corporation has guaranteed to buy a fixed amount of the plant’s output over the first 15 years starting from initial commercial operation at a reported price of 12.35 US cents per kWh, with the rest of the electricity to be sold on the open market by the project company.
The minister expressed Turkey’s determination to construct nuclear power plants, and said there were lessons to be taken from the crisis in Japan.
Yildiz said experts would check and control issues related with earthquakes and Ecemis fault line, only 25-30 kilometers away from the planned Akkuyu nuclear power plant.
Also, Yildiz said Turkey hoped the situation to be stabilized in North Africa and Libya because energy sector did not like political instability.
Moreover, Luxembourg’s minister Krecke said transit routes would be important for the world if oil and natural gas continued to be the main energy resources, and therefore underlined importance of Turkey’s role.
Krecke said he thought Turkey’s role would be more as not only a transit country but also a resource supplier.