Why can’t nuclear plans solve the energy crisis?
The plant plans in Akkuyu and İğneada cannot hide the realities behind nuclear energy. The “effective solution” label placed on nuclear is false, and this form of generation is expensive, dangerous and full of technical dead ends.
The fact that the Akkuyu Nuclear Plant will start producing, albeit in a limited way, in 2026 and that information about the location of the planned new nuclear plant in İğneada and the environmental disaster risks it will create during construction has reached the public has brought debates on nuclear energy back to the national agenda.
The history of producing energy from nuclear technology is actually a history of unkept promises and environmental and social disasters caused by major accidents. The claim that nuclear electricity would be “too cheap to meter” and that a “nuclear age” would begin never came true. The prediction made in 1971 by Glen Seaborg, Nobel laureate and then head of the Atomic Energy Commission, that nuclear reactors would produce almost all of the world’s electricity by 2000 and that people would even be transported to Mars thanks to nuclear propulsion systems has become, in hindsight, a tragicomic historical anecdote. According to the official data of the International Energy Agency nuclear energy accounts for only about 9 per cent of global electricity generation.
PROMISE OF BUYING AT DOUBLE THE PRICE
There are rational reasons for this. First this energy source is not cheap. Almost all projects including Akkuyu are built in far longer times and at far higher costs than planned. Moreover the claim that energy costs will be lower after construction is not true. No need to look far: under the agreements half of the electricity produced by Akkuyu NPP will be bought for 15 years at a price of 12.35 dollar cents/kWh under the state guarantee. Even today the Market Clearing Price set on the exchange is around 2.74 TL/kWh which is roughly 6.5 dollar cents/kWh.
This energy source is also not safe. The history of this generation model includes at least five major accidents which resulted in radiation releases and major human and environmental disasters. According to the literature the risk of disaster in electricity generation from this technology is around 1 per cent. This is a very high rate and no other type of power plant carries such a high risk.
Moreover nuclear plants still have very serious technical problems that have not been solved. The most important of these is the storage of what is called spent fuel or waste fuel the material that emerges after being used in the reactor to generate electricity, has very high radiation capacity and a half life of millions of years. After leaving the reactor this dangerous material is kept in pools for a certain period and then must somehow be stored. To prevent radiation release the storage facilities of these materials must be very secure. No facility has yet been built in the world where this waste can be stored safely on a permanent basis. In all nuclear plants this waste is kept temporarily in pools or similar facilities. Likewise another unresolved issue of nuclear plants is their dismantling after their technical life is over. Usually plants that are shut down are left as they are and the sites are kept as protected areas closed to humans. In other words even after nuclear plants stop operating some operating costs continue and the dangers of radiation release persist.
LOBBYING DOES NOT CARE ABOUT SCARCITY
Another rarely mentioned issue is possible uranium scarcity. It appears that the uranium peak was reached as early as 2016. Because nuclear electricity generation has stayed flat the effect of this is not felt in the short term but it will become clear in the coming years. Moreover 16 per cent of annual uranium consumption comes from secondary reserves that is from sources extracted 20 to 30 years ago but not yet fully used (one of these secondary “sources” is also nuclear bombs dismantled under disarmament agreements).
Despite all these facts structural factors such as geopolitical realities like the Russia Ukraine war, the power of nuclear lobbies and capitalism’s need for unlimited growth bring new promises of technological breakthroughs to the public agenda in every period. These include “new generation” technologies which in theory would run on fast neutrons and therefore use non reactive and abundant materials like thorium in the earth’s crust but in fact have a 70 year history full of serious technical problems, nuclear fusion dreams which in the most optimistic scenario carry no hope of scientific breakthrough before 2050 and SMR type small scale modular nuclear reactors which even institutions like the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis that cannot be considered oppositional describe as “very expensive, very slow and very risky”.
Under the shadow of these promotional efforts each of which requires long term research and scientific technical breakthroughs and has a very low chance of reaching a safe and economic outcome given the history of unkept promises, central countries are abandoning the nuclear adventure while countries like ours unfortunately choose to invest in this old and cumbersome technology which will also create new external dependencies.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Nükleer neden enerji krizinin çözümü olamaz?, published in BirGün newspaper on November 21, 2025.
