Nuclear energy debate in Turkey: Stakeholders, policy alternatives, and governance issues

Cem İskender Aydın

Energy Policy, 2020, vol. 136, issue C

Abstract: For the last six decades, Turkish governments have been advocating the construction of a nuclear power plant (NPP) on the grounds that it is necessary for the development of the country, that the country needs nuclear energy for economic growth, and more importantly, that an NPP would mark a milestone in Turkey's journey of modernisation. However, national and local opposition has also existed from the beginning on. The first attempts to build an NPP in late 1970s were met with an immediate reaction from the civil society, concerned about potential problems such as NPP's impact on environment and health, waste management, and risk of nuclear accidents, giving rise to a long-standing conflict that is yet to be settled. In order to better understand Turkey's previous and current motivations to build a nuclear power plant, this study will first recount the country's history of nuclear power followed by a discourse analysis using a multidimensional environmental justice framework, which will investigate different stakeholders' views and perceptions, and the alternative policies proposed by them. The discourse analysis built on the historical narrative is helpful in identifying sources of conflicts between stakeholders, and in presenting these conflicts in a transparent and comprehensible manner.

Keywords: Nuclear energy; Turkey; Discourse analysis; Environmental justice; Akkuyu; Sinop (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519306287
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:136:y:2020:i:c:s0301421519306287

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2019.111041

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().