A Russian-made nuclear power plant is being built in Mersin, scheduled to open by the end of the year. Supporters point out that 20% of the world’s power plants are located in seismic zones. And Rosatom assures that the plant can withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake. Activists and civil society call for a united front between the government and the opposition to stop the project.
Milan () – The devastating earthquake of February 6 in Turkey (and Syria), with the thousands of aftershocks that followed the main earthquake, some of great intensity, have reopened the debate on nuclear technology for energy production. Ankara, in collaboration with the Russian giant Rosatom, is building a plant in Akkuiu, in the southern province of Mersin, with three Vver-1200 pressurized water reactors under construction and a fourth in the preliminary phase. The works are expected to be completed in 2026 and supply the country with almost 27.5 TW/h per year (close to 9% of demand), but critical voices are multiplying.
In recent days, activists from the “Anti-Nuclear Platform” in Mersin, the epicenter of the Turkish government’s atomic plans, held a press conference in which they recalled that the city, although less affected than others by the earthquake, continues to be an area seismic. The headquarters of the Human Rights Association (IHD) addressed the government and the opposition to request that they create a common front against the atomic plan, regardless of the result of the elections on May 14.
Osman Koçak, spokesperson for the platform, states that “the seismic wave shows that, despite all the scientific and technological advances of humanity, we can make estimates of natural events, but we cannot predict the moment, the place, the extent and the destruction that will ensue.” He then recalled the earthquakes and tsunamis that struck, between 1953 and 2023, the Mersin area where the atomic power station is being built. For this reason, he concluded, Rosatom’s denials about the negative effects of the quake on the plant and its ability to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake are “totally unfounded.”
Meanwhile, Turkey and Syria continue to shake, with another two shocks of magnitude 6.4 and 5.8 in the last few hours that hit Hatay province, causing six more casualties and nearly 300 injuries, some of them seriously. To the more than 46,000 deaths already verified, new deaths are added, so the balance is increasingly dramatic; there are also wounded in Syria, in Aleppo and Idlib.
The Akkuyu plant is about 338 km from the epicenter of the February 6 earthquake and, at least in theory, should withstand high-intensity tremors. However, as the tragedy of the Fukushima plant in Japan teaches us – a country, on the other hand, accustomed to tremors – there is no certainty that it will resist a possible incident. In this sense, at least for the Turkish population, the guarantees of Russian experts that “the possibility of an earthquake of magnitude 9 is one every 10,000 years” is of little use.
A Turkish official, contacted by Associated Press, says there are no “immediate” plans to review the project, and US expert Andrew Whittaker, a civil engineer at the University of Buffalo, calls for “caution” but says “there is no particular reason for concern.” However, for anti-nuclear activists the threat remains. And it is real, to the point of worrying the movements on the island of Cyprus (both on the Turkish and Greek sides), among the most exposed in the event of an atomic catastrophe. For their part, the supporters revive the data of the World Nuclear Association, according to which about 20% of the reactors built and in operation in the world are located in zones of “significant” seismic activity. Again the Rising Sun is mentioned, where the Hamaoka nuclear power plant is located in a region where phenomena of up to 8.5 degrees of magnitude can occur. And in Turkey, the Mersin area was chosen because it is considered “one of the safest” in the region in seismic terms.
To this we must finally add commercial and geopolitical aspects, in an international situation of great tension caused first by the war in Syria – where Ankara and Moscow, partners in the construction, were divided by their support (or confrontation) with President Bashar al Assad. – and today because of the Russian war in Ukraine. The plant, from which the first of the four reactors is expected to come online by the end of the year, will have a total capacity of 4,800 megawatts of electricity, which will supply approximately 10% of the country’s needs. According to government figures, if the plant -whose cost exceeds 20,000 million euros- were to start operating today, it could supply enough electricity for a city of about 15 million inhabitants, such as Istanbul. Rosatom has a 99.2% interest in the project and is responsible for construction, maintenance, operation and decommissioning.
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