Japan and Turkey agreed Friday to work toward the resumption of negotiations on a bilateral nuclear cooperation pact, Kyodo News reported.
The agreement was announced by Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu after their meeting in Ankara.
Davutoglu also told a joint news conference that Turkey is hoping to launch talks with Japan on a bilateral free trade agreement.
In an attempt to enhance bilateral economic cooperation, the two countries agreed to start regular ministerial-level dialogue, Gemba said, adding that Japan will consider the feasibility of an FTA with Turkey within this new framework.
Turkey is planning to build nuclear power plants in three locations by 2023. The talks between Tokyo and Ankara on the construction of its second nuclear complex, as well as on a civilian nuclear power pact, were suspended following the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.
Gemba is on an eight-day tour that started Thursday and will also take him to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to discuss regional and energy issues.
via Japan, Turkey agree to restart nuclear cooperation – MarketWatch.
Workers have been trying to stabilise the badly-damaged Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant
Japanese reactor maker Toshiba says it could decommission the earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in about 10 years, a third quicker than the US Three Mile Island plant.
Radiation has been leaking from the Fukushima plant since a 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami on 11 March.
Its operator said it would stop pumping radioactive water into the sea on Sunday, a day later than expected.
Meanwhile Banri Kaieda is set to become the first cabinet minister to visit.
Mr Kaieda has responsibility for all of Japan’s nuclear power stations and is scheduled to visit on Saturday.
He is expected to don a full protective suit for a tour inside the plant to inspect the work to stop radiation leaking from the site.
Radiation has seeped into tap water and farm produce, leading some countries to ban imports of Japanese produce and fish.
High levels of radiation have also been detected in the Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of the coastal plant.
The twin disasters on 11 March killed more than 12,800 people. Nearly 15,000 are listed as missing. Hundreds of thousands of people have been made homeless and a number of communities in Japan’s north-east have been devastated.
‘Unstable reactors’
Toshiba, one of two Japanese nuclear reactor makers, said it could decommission the Fukushima-Daiichi plant in about 10 years, Kyodo news agency reported.
That would be about two-thirds of the time taken to dismantle the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the US after it suffered a partial reactor core meltdown in 1979.
The work would involve removing the fuel rods from their containers and the spent fuel rods from the storage pools from four of the plant’s reactors and demolishing facilities, Kyodo said.
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A deadly aftershock struck just before midnight on Thursday
However, chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said it was too soon to have a timetable for decommissioning.
“The Japanese government has always hoped to draft a detailed [decommissioning] roadmap,” he said on Friday.
“But the very fact that the reactors are unstable puts us in a situation where we have to continue to debate whether we can issue a responsible outlook.”
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said it would continue an operation to dump 11,500 tonnes of low-level radioactive water from the plant into the sea until Sunday.
The operation had been expected to last until Saturday, but Tepco said the work was delayed by a powerful aftershock on Thursday that killed three people.
The work is designed to make room for highly radioactive water that leaked into the basement of the turbine building next to the plant’s No 2 reactor and an adjoining tunnel.
Workers at the plant have pumped in tonnes of water to cool the overheating reactors, making the water radioactive.
China has urged Japan to observe international law and adopt effective measures to protect the marine environment, amid concern over the discharge of some of the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.
South Korea has also complained of not being notified that radioactive water would be pumped into the ocean.
Japan on Saturday announced it would ban farmers from planting rice in any soil found to contain high levels of radioactive matter and provide compensation.
“We had to come up with a policy quickly because we are in planting season,” said Agriculture Minister Michihiko Kano.
ISTANBUL // Turkey will press on with plans to build the country’s first nuclear power plants despite the latest nuclear accidents in Japan, a decision the opposition and environmental activists say is irresponsible in the face of widespread earthquake risks in Turkey.
Japanese medical personnel check a child for radiation exposure in Fukushima. Turkish officials say that what happened at Japan's nuclear facilities will not stop the nation's plant to build power plants. Asahi Shimbun / EPA
“We will not give up on our determination in the nuclear field,” Taner Yildiz, Turkey’s energy minister, said this week.
The minister added that the reactors causing trouble in Japan after last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami were outdated. “It is a technology from 40 years ago,” the minister said. “Today’s safety systems are much more advanced.”
The minister’s statement came as other countries, including Germany and Switzerland, announced they were reviewing their positions regarding the use of nuclear power in the light of events in Japan.
Plans to build nuclear facilities in Turkey go back several decades but gathered fresh momentum in recent years. In 2009, Ankara sent out a tender for the construction of the country’s first reactor, which is scheduled to go online between 2016 and 2019.
Opponents of nuclear power say the risk of earthquakes in almost all of Turkey makes the technology too dangerous. Smaller quakes are registered in the country almost every day, and tens of thousands of people have died from massive quakes in the past few decades. Close to 20,000 people died in an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale in the north-west of the country in 1999. A quake measuring a 4.6 magnitude shook the eastern Turkish city of Van late on Monday. There were no reports of injuries or damages. (The moment magnitude scale has generally replaced the Richter scale, though the scales are comparable.)
Countries around the world were taking a new and critical look at nuclear technology, Pinar Aksogan, an energy expert of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, said in a statement. “And what is our energy minister Taner Yildiz doing? He keeps the nuclear crisis hidden from the public and acts as if everything is under control.” She accused the minister of “putting all of our lives at risk”.
A small group of demonstrators gathered at Taksim Square in the centre of Istanbul this week to protest against the government’s determination to build nuclear reactors. “We do not want nuclear power plants,” they shouted.
Ankara argues that Turkey needs nuclear energy to help fuel the country’s rapidly growing economy, to avoid environmental pollution and to reduce dependence on natural gas imports, mostly from Russia and Iran. About half of Turkey’s energy needs are met by natural gas and roughly one third by coal-fuelled power plants. Turkey’s economy has doubled in size in the past 10 years and is expected to grow by 4.5 per cent this year.
Environmentalists say Turkey should do much more to boost renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power and could make its energy system more efficient by taking steps towards more safe energy sources and to avoiding energy waste.
Turkey’s power plant is scheduled to be built in Akkuyu, near Mersin on the Mediterranean coast, while another one is planned to be built in Sinop on the Black Sea. Russian companies are to build the reactor in Akkuyu, while negotiations with Japanese companies to build the plant in Sinop are ongoing. The projects are expected to cost around US$20 billion (Dh73.4bn) each.
Mr Yildiz, the energy minister, conceded that there were lessons to be learnt from recent events in Japan and that those lessons would form part of the negotiations for Turkey’s reactors. But he stressed that nuclear power would be safe despite the risk of earthquakes and that the situation in Japan was not comparable to conditions in Turkey.
“Of course there is no danger of a tsunami here,” the minister said. “And we do not expect an earthquake here, even if one occurs, God forbid, to be that strong,” he said in reference to the 9.0-magnitude quake in Japan last week.
Because the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP, seems determined to push ahead with its nuclear plans, the debate will probably heat up further before parliamentary elections scheduled for June 12. Ali Riza Ozturk, an opposition deputy in parliament representing Mersin, the city near the planned nuclear site of Akkuyu, called on Mr Yildiz to explain why he wants to stick with the project despite the risks.
“Does the minister have firm evidence that there will be no earthquake in Akkuyu, or is Mersin not important to the AKP government?” Mr Ozturk asked in written questions addressed to Mr Yildiz, which under parliamentary rules the minister is obliged to answer.
Some observers also voiced doubts about the safety of the Akkuyu site. Necdet Pamir, an energy expert, told Vatan newspaper that the permission to build a nuclear reactor in Akkuyu was issued in the 1970s, at a time when seismologists were unaware of a tectonic fault just 20km to 25km to the north-east of the site. “After the events in Japan we have to fundamentally revisit the permission for the nuclear power plant at Akkuyu.”
A second explosion could hit the nuclear power plant damaged in Japan’s devastating earthquake, officials have warned.
Chief cabinet minister Yukio Edano warned of a hydrogen blast in reactor three at the Daiichi plant in Fukushima, but insisted it could withstand it as reactor one did on Saturday.
The first explosion destroyed the building housing reactor one, but did not prompt a major radiation leak.
Mr Edano said it was highly likely a partial meltdown had occurred in one reactor of the Fukushima plant, and that authorities were working on the assumption that one may occur in another.
Operators are now attempting to reduce the risk of meltdown at a total of three of the affected reactors at Daiichi by injecting sea water into them.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said it was preparing to release some steam to relieve pressure in the reactor at the plant – 150 miles (241km) north of Tokyo.
This plan would release a small amount of radiation.
“We can stabilise the reactor if we take the air out and pump water in the vessel properly,” Mr Edano said.
“At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion.
“If there is an explosion, however, there would be no significant impact on human health.”
The government has insisted radiation levels are low following Saturday’s explosion, saying the blast had not affected the reactor’s core container.
Some 22 people have showed signs of possible exposure to radiation at the Fukushima plant.
But officials from the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency say up to 160 may have suffered radiation exposure.
A 12-mile (19km) radius has been imposed on the Fukushima Daiichi plant with an estimated 170,000 people already having been evacuated.
Sky News’ Holly Williams, in Fukushima, said: “The experts I’m speaking to say that at the moment, as long as people are evacuated from the area, there is very little risk to humans.
“But they say the big risk here is fire. If either of these reactors caught fire, that would spread that radiation over a much larger area, which is obviously the concern of Japanese authorities at this moment.”
A six-mile exclusion zone is also in place around the nearby Fukushima Daini station, with an estimated 30,000 people told to leave the area.
