Turkey to build a CANDU reactor by 2015.

[NNadir]

Turkey has been struggling with the idea of going nuclear since 1955. A long fight surrounded previous plans to build a reactor at Akkuyu, which was ultimately cancelled because of a nearby earthquake fault. (Personally I think this was a dumb idea, cancelling the reactor, but that's just my opinion.)

As usual, the Greenpeace fools will come out in force to fight this reactor which will be situated at Sinop. Certainly there will be a great deal of argument about how no Islamic state should be allowed to have a nuclear power plant because well, they're Moslems. We can expect all sorts of hysterical comment along these lines from the regular upper middle class white boys who make up most of Greenpeace's clown squad about how Turkey must be intending to make nuclear weapons, like Belgium, Sweden, Canada and Switzerland.

The reactor will be of a CANDU design since Turkey intends to rely on its own reserves of uranium and wants to use the uranium without enrichment, which is only possible with CANDU's. The CANDU design can be used to completely eliminate the need for enrichment, but it is also true that it, along with the infamous RBMK of the Chernobyl type is the only type of commercial nuclear reactor that can, in theory, be used to manufacture weapons grade plutonium. This risk can be minimized by using once through uranium - from spent fuel from Pressurized Water Reactors - but Turkey clearly intends to use natural virgin uranium. Advanced fuel cycles using CANDUs as a part of the international nuclear fleet, under IAEA supervision, make it possible to envision a nuclear fuel cycle in which no enrichment plants operate anywhere on earth.

Personally, I like the CANDU design and hope that many CANDU's will be built around the world in the coming years. They are very versatile reactors that offer significant advantages in nonproliferation and resource extension terms.

IAEA approval is being sought for the reactor, and El Baradei has effectively already agreed.

This report from a Turkish newspaper is fun because of its idiosyncratic English which has clearly been translated from the original Turkish into English.

Building a nuclear energy plant requires first and foremost a political preference coupled with environmental consideration of the pros and cons of the eventualities. After a half a century of wavering, since 1956, now it seems that the political will is there as the decision has been taken by the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government. The question of whether or not it was the right decision is now behind us. To many, energy-hungry Turkey has no alternative but to join the nuclear club for no doubt peaceful purposes.

As the historic decision has been taken by the government, now a certain process has to be followed, locally and internationally, like officially getting in touch with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna for approval. Nobel Peace Prize winner and IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei was in Istanbul recently and in a public statement gave his personal green light to Turkey's application. The informal contacts with the IAEA and with individual countries producing nuclear technology have been in process for some time now...

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http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=51830

It is expected that there will be electricity shortages in Turkey in the two to three years before the reactor comes on line in 2015.

The Turkish timeline is slower than is achievable in advanced nuclear states but in Turkey all nuclear operations are necessarily FOAKE (First of a kind engineering.) The South Korean Wolsong 3 CANDU reactor was built from first pouring of concrete to going into service in 4 and a half years.

http://www.aecl.ca/Reactors/CANDU6/CANDU6-Units/Wolsong.htm

http://www.aecl.ca/Reactors/CANDU6/CANDU6-Units/Wolsong.htm