Turkish uranium atlas
Turkey has been planning to enter the nuclear age for more than 50 years. The first four reactors have been under construction in Akkuyu for several years, and the first reactor is to be connected to the grid this year. The Turkish uranium atlas shows the economic madness that the country is making with it: According to research by the Turkish partner Ekosfer, the Russian state corporation Rosatom, which is building the four reactors in Akkuyu, receives 12.5 $ cents per kilowatt hour for half of the nuclear power generated. The other half is sold at the market price. At the same time, renewable energy costs only a split, as the Uranium Atlas shows.
Electricity from wind power can be generated in Turkey for between 1 and 1.7 $ cents per kilowatt hour, solar power for 1.7 to 3.5 $ cents. Electricity from biomass is also very cost-effective at $1.7 to $2.7 cents, and hydropower comes in at $2.15 cents. And even geothermal is doing well in Turkey at $2.9 cents. Entering the adventure of nuclear power is economically not understandable and ecologically completely nonsensical. And the costs for the necessary final storage of the resulting nuclear waste and the dismantling of the nuclear power plants are not priced in.
The Akkuyu nuclear power plant will be built. With the information from the uranium atlas, the critics try to prevent at least the uranium mining in Turkey. Because also this is to be started. Turkey has only about 12,000 tons of uranium in five regions that can be mined. The uranium ore has a uranium concentration of 0.1 percent or significantly less. By comparison, uranium ore from the Cigar Lake Mine in Canada has a uranium content of up to 13 percent. The Turkish deposits are thus at the lower end of the economically recoverable reserves. Mining them is economically questionable and would be ecologically disastrous.