Possible new partner for Akkuyu nuclear power plant

The Black Sea region has not been able to recover from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster trauma that occurred 30 years ago. I was visiting the Black Sea provinces of Trabzon and Rize on the 30th anniversary of the disaster last week.

I visited Ayder Valley, a natural wonder in Rize that has been defeated by irregular development and which has recently become a hot spot especially by Gulf tourists.  The day we visited Ayder Valley, news came that the father of Kaz?m Koyuncu, a cult musician from the region, had lost his life to cancer. 

The singer himself, who had created his own style by synthesizing traditional Black Sea music with rock, also died of cancer in 2005 when he was 33. Residents of the Ayder Valley were sad and concerned when they said, "It is the effect of Chernobyl." 

Even though 30 years have passed, the effect of Chernobyl is frequently referred to in this region.

In a country in which "the effect of Chernobyl," how much damage it has caused - primarily to the Black Sea area - and its other consequences have not been properly discussed, Russians are building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in the Mediterranean province of Mersin.

Along the Black Sea, preparations for nuclear power plants in Sinop and ??neada are continuing. The tender for the nuclear power plant in the Black Sea province of Sinop was won by Japan's Mitsubishi and France's Areva companies. 

There has been no discussion at all about a problem that occurred last year with the new-generation prototype EPR nuclear reactor that Areva was planning for Sinop. I was in London, by coincidence, when multiple faults in the cooling system's safety valves were discovered in the EPR nuclear reactor. The matter was discussed for days in the media...