Turkey’s nuke hopes warrant homegrown atomic education

ANKARA - Anadolu Agency

Rosatom will build and operate the nuclear plant in the province of Mersin. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

Around 200 Turkish students have studied nuclear power technology in Russia until now, however Turkey is in need of devising its own nuclear education ¬curriculum to be able to establish its future plants by itself, said Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant Vice President Rauf Kasumov yesterday.

“If Turkey wants to create a fairly developed nuclear program and to have four nuclear plants in the future, it should establish its own nuclear education curricullum,” he noted.

Around 200 Turkish students have received education in nuclear technology while in Russia until now, in accordance with an intergovernmental agreement between Turkey and Russia as part of Ankara’s plans to open a nuclear power plant in the country. In July 2010, the Turkish Parliament approved a deal with Russia for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the southern province of Akkuyu.

600 students in total

A total of 600 students will study nuclear power technology in Russia.

“There is only one nuclear engineering department in Turkey, at Hacettepe University in the capital Ankara, which accepts only 40 students. This is definitely not enough for Turkey,” he said.

Kasumov noted that they had planned a gradual education transfer to Turkey, yet the planned technology transfer would not be a simple project.

“We can only transfer such technologies to nuclear engineers, but not civil engineers or mechanic engineers. Before we can commence on our technology transfer to Turkey in this field, Turkey needs to develop some solid nuclear education, which must be meet the requirements of Turkey’s own dynamics,” he said, adding that Turkey also needed to have more than one R-D facility and center related to the field of nuclear technology.

He also added that they were willing to build a third and fourth nuclear plant in Turkey.