Reports of cracks appearing in the foundations of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, under construction in a quake-prone area, have rekindled fears over the project, with the opposition and civic groups calling for a parliamentary probe and an independent inspection of the facility.
Construction work on the $20 billion project, awarded to Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom, kicked off in April 2018 at Akkuyu in the Mediterranean province of Mersin amid simmering warnings, both at home and abroad, over the risks. The plant will have four units, each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts.
Not long after the groundbreaking, concrete foundations on which the first unit was to be built cracked, according to a bombshell report in the Haberturk daily last month. The journalist who broke the news, Olcay Aydilek, a well-respected member of the press corps in Ankara, told Al-Monitor he had researched the story with multiple sources and obtained multiple confirmations of the cracks.
According to the report, the first cracks in the foundations for the reactor appeared in July 2018. Upon the intervention of the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK), the cracked areas were broken up and relaid. But cracks appeared again, causing the foundations to be relaid again in the problem areas.
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