Türkiye and Nuclear Energy: Strategic Prioritization Supported by Sustainability Consideration

In the context of Türkiye, the decision-making process concerning nuclear energy is characterised by a series of interwoven strategic considerations, including but not limited to energy security, decarbonisation, cost, technological dependence, and public acceptance. The present study employs the SWOT–AHP method, interpreted from the perspective of sustainability, to rank the strategic factors influencing Türkiye’s nuclear energy development in order of priority. A total of 12 experts from academia and public institutions evaluated a 15-factor SWOT matrix. The evaluations were then aggregated using the geometric mean. The highest priorities within the categories were identified as the existence of international co-operations such as Akkuyu NPP project (S2), insufficient technical capacity and infrastructure (W1), localisation in energy and reducing foreign dependency. (O1), and existence of active faults (T3). When category weights were set equal, O1 ranked first in the overall ranking, while social acceptance (W3) and delays in the construction of nuclear energy facilities (T1) ranked at the bottom. While the overall evaluations remained constant, the individual matrices of the majority of the experts exhibited variations. The application of bootstrap resampling revealed that the highest and lowest priorities were supported exclusively (O1 ranked first in 92% of resamples). The overall ranking demonstrated sensitivity to category weights that were not compared by the experts. The results obtained can inform policies that balance supply security with environmental, economic, and social considerations; however, the extant literature calls for further empirical, quantitative, and technical analysis in this area.