{"id":1881,"date":"2015-04-14T22:10:25","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T22:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=1881"},"modified":"2015-04-14T22:10:25","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T22:10:25","slug":"turkey-starts-construction-of-its-first-nuclear-power-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/turkey-starts-construction-of-its-first-nuclear-power-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey starts construction of its first nuclear power plant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turkey has started the controversial construction of its first nuclear power plant, which Ankara hopes will bring a new era of greater energy self-sufficiency for the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

During a ceremony on Tuesday, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz hailed the plant\u2019s construction, saying nuclear energy was key to development in any nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had built this power station 10 years ago, we would have saved $14 billion in natural gas purchases,\u201d Yildiz said.<\/p>\n

“If it was operational today, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant could have met the electricity needs of Istanbul which has a 15 million population. It is a $22 billion investment in a relatively small area,” Yildiz said at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

A number of top energy officials, including Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of\u00a0Russia\u2019s Rosatom nuclear agency, were also present at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

The station, the first of the three Turkish nuclear power plants to be constructed in the country, is being built by Rosatom in Mersin Province. The project will cost about $22 billion.<\/p>\n

\"Mersin-Akkuyu-Nuclear-Power-Plant\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Akkuyu plant, which will have four power units, is expected to be completed by 2020.<\/p>\n

This comes as Ankara has responded to concerns that the plant lies in a seismic zone by saying it would be able to resist nine-magnitude earthquakes.<\/p>\n

However, after the launch ceremony, dozens of environmental protesters converged on the iron gates of the site in Akkuyu in Mersin province on the shores of the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

They managed to lock in the official delegations, security forces and journalists inside the site and were only dispersed when a water cannon truck was used against them, video footage showed.<\/p>\n

In January, the environmentalist campaign group, Greenpeace, launched a complaint in court against the issuance of an environmental impact license to the plant,\u00a0which is located in an area rich with wildlife.<\/p>\n

Greenpeace argues that Ankara is not prepared to build nuclear reactors as it is still lacking \u201ckey pieces of necessary legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes just weeks after the country suffered its worst nationwide power cut in nearly two decades.<\/p>\n

AA\/YN\/SZH\/MKA\/SS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey has started the controversial construction of its first nuclear power plant, which Ankara hopes will bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[152,356,108,82],"class_list":["post-1881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-energy","tag-middle-east","tag-nuclear","tag-turkey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Turkey-Nuclear-Power-Plant.jpg?fit=645%2C344&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-ul","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1893,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions\/1893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}