TR Industry, Science and Technology

[Bogeyman]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1693302091169583583

 

[Heartbang]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1693302091169583583

The article is paywalled.

 

[Agha Sher]

Turkiye is evaluating sites for a 4th Nuclear powerplant in addition to SMR sites.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1693888813037166617

 

[Zafer]

Curious if abundant electric power can negate the need for natural gas power for home use; for heating, cooking, bathing which is powered by gas at the moment. What is the math?

 

[Afif]

Turkiye is evaluating sites for a 4th Nuclear powerplant in addition to SMR sites.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1693888813037166617

I think they should finalize the second project first before evaluating sites for 4th plant.

 

[Zafer]

I see that nuclear power is more than twice the price of gas in 2021 pre-war (?) prices.

Cost of electricity by source - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/255e9cba-da84-4681-8c1f-458ca1a3d9ca/ElectricityMarketReport2023.pdf

EDIT: I see that cost of electric from gas has caught up with nuclear power as of 2023. It makes sense to increase nuclear power generation efforts.

 

[Agha Sher]

I think should finalize the second project first before evaluating sites for 4th plant.

2nd site has been confirmed to be Sinop. Talks with SK and Russia for the construction.
3rd site has been confirmed somewhere in Thrace. Talks with China for construction.

They are accelerating nuclear efforts. (potentially to acquire expertise rapidly in case a nuclear weapon program should become a priority)

 

[uçuyorum]

Renewable is much cheaper than either and Turkey has enough combined wind and solar potential to feed entire grid eventually. Shoukd prioritize that

 

[Zafer]

Renewable is much cheaper than either and Turkey has enough combined wind and solar potential to feed entire grid eventually. Shoukd prioritize that

Nuclear is around the clock, renewable is part time.

 

[boredaf]

Now this is a very good purchase:

Turkish armour giant Nurol Teknoloji acquires German company

Türk zırh devi Nurol Teknoloji Alman şirketi satın aldı

Türk savunma sanayii şirketi Nurol Teknoloji, Alman seramik hammadde üreticisi INDUSTRIE KERAMIK HOCHRHEIN (IKH) firmasının çoğunluk hissesini satın aldı.

www.savunmasanayist.com

Nurol Teknoloji, the Ankara-based defence industry company Nurol Teknoloji, one of the world's leading manufacturers of advanced technical ballistic ceramics and one of the largest armour suppliers to Turkey and NATO countries, is strengthening its leadership in advanced technical ceramic technologies with the acquisition of a majority stake in the German ceramic raw material producer INDUSTRIE KERAMIK HOCHRHEIN (IKH).

INDUSTRIE KERAMIK HOCHRHEIN (IKH) has been developing and producing innovative advanced technical ceramic powders since 1995. IKH, which has been developing special products for many technology giants in the field of powder metallurgy and advanced technical ceramics for years, is one of the leading players in the advanced technical ceramics industry with its expertise in ceramic technologies, innovative approach and two modern production facilities for fine/ultrafine, oxide/non-oxide ceramic powders.

 

[TheInsider]

That company has a vast experience in advanced ceramics. Nurol also produces advanced ceramics.

 

[Huelague]

Now this is a very good purchase:

Turkish armour giant Nurol Teknoloji acquires German company

Türk zırh devi Nurol Teknoloji Alman şirketi satın aldı

Türk savunma sanayii şirketi Nurol Teknoloji, Alman seramik hammadde üreticisi INDUSTRIE KERAMIK HOCHRHEIN (IKH) firmasının çoğunluk hissesini satın aldı.

www.savunmasanayist.com

Nurol Teknoloji, the Ankara-based defence industry company Nurol Teknoloji, one of the world's leading manufacturers of advanced technical ballistic ceramics and one of the largest armour suppliers to Turkey and NATO countries, is strengthening its leadership in advanced technical ceramic technologies with the acquisition of a majority stake in the German ceramic raw material producer INDUSTRIE KERAMIK HOCHRHEIN (IKH).

INDUSTRIE KERAMIK HOCHRHEIN (IKH) has been developing and producing innovative advanced technical ceramic powders since 1995. IKH, which has been developing special products for many technology giants in the field of powder metallurgy and advanced technical ceramics for years, is one of the leading players in the advanced technical ceramics industry with its expertise in ceramic technologies, innovative approach and two modern production facilities for fine/ultrafine, oxide/non-oxide ceramic powders.

Cant find the news on german pages.

 

[UkroTurk]

Do we have such nano nuclear generator projects?

ZEUS | NANO Nuclear Energy

nanonuclearenergy.com

Featuring a fully solid core, removing heat through thermal conduction, eliminating the need for coolant and pumps. Our reactor utilizes the simplest design with the least moving components and ensures the immobilization of fission products.



Or cooled micro reactors?

The U.S. Military Wants Tiny Road Mobile Nuclear Reactors That Can Fit In A C-17

The power demands to sustain American military operations are only increasing, but small nuclear power plants could present new problems.

www.thedrive.com

South Korean Team to Develop SMR-powered Ships

South Korean Team to Develop SMRs to Power Ships Poland / France’s EDF Signs MOU for SMRs NANO Nuclear Closes $4.14M Funding Round for Micro Reactor NANO Nuclear Energy Inc Creates HALEU Fuel Spino…

neutronbytes.com

 

[neosinan]

Turkish electric tran review by Train review YouTuber.

 

[MhhJA]

ASELSAN RAIL SYSTEM PROJECTS


ASELSAN'S FIELDS OF ACTIVITY AND PROJECTS CARRIED OUT IN RAIL VEHICLE SYSTEMS
ASELSAN produces indigenous and national solutions in critical and foreign-dependent areas such as traction drives, auxiliary power units, traction motors and train control management systems in rail vehicles with the experience gained in the military field.

ANKARAY OPERATION AUXILIARY POWER UNIT DEVELOPMENT AND MASS PRODUCTION PROJECT
Within the scope of the contract signed between EGO General Directorate and ASELSAN, a new generation Auxiliary Power Unit specifically for ANKARAY vehicles was developed by ASELSAN within a short period of time. The developed prototype product was designed in accordance with the existing mechanical and electrical interfaces of the vehicle. Therefore, there was no need to make any changes to the vehicle. The auxiliary power units of the entire fleet were replaced with new generation technological products. According to the data obtained from the field for 3 years, the availability percentage is calculated as 99.9%.

NATIONAL ELECTRIC TRAIN TRACTION CHAIN AND TRAIN CONTROL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND MASS PRODUCTION PROJECTS
In the National Electric Train Set prototype project designed and manufactured by Türkiye Raylı Sistem Araçları Sanayii A.Ş. (TÜRASAŞ), ASELSAN provided the critical components of the Traction System (main transformer, traction converter and auxiliary converter, traction motor, gearbox) and Train Control Management System (TCMS).

Turkey's first drive unit CESUR™ (Traction Drive), one of the traction system components originally designed by ASELSAN, is used in the National Electric Train. CESUR™ is Turkey's first drive unit that includes a dual motor drive, auxiliary power unit, battery charging unit and internal liquid cooling system in a compact structure within the same unit.

The Train Control Management System (TCMS), indigenously developed by ASELSAN, controls the functions of the vehicle such as acceleration, door control, passenger passes and lighting, while also managing comfort-oriented subsystems such as air conditioning and passenger information. The architecture, control reliability algorithms, hardware, embedded and application software of the TKYS computer, which is designed in a modular structure, were developed by ASELSAN.

As a result of the success achieved in field tests, passenger operation has started in the first two train sets and a contract was signed with TÜRASAŞ on 01.11.2022 for the supply of ASELSAN systems for 19 train sets within the scope of mass production.

In parallel with the work on prototype train sets, the gearbox, traction motor and main transformer units, which previously had to be procured from abroad, are being nationalised under the leadership of ASELSAN.

---

ASELSAN RAYLI SİSTEM PROJELERİ

ASELSAN raylı sistem projelerine yakından bakın.

www.aselsan.com

 

[moz68k]

@moz68k would like to hear an explanation of Safir Zekâ, I don't know much about software stuff

Sure thing, from what I understand, it's TUBITAK's hand-rolled version of an end-to-end machine learning platform. ML/Data scientists, software engineers at various institutions across Turkey doing critical basic science and (defence) R&D probably used (or wanted to use) commercial MLaaS (Machine Learning as a Service) platforms like Azure ML or Amazon Sagemaker, which pose data ownership issues. It seems Safir Zeka (SZ) covers a lot of what those platforms have to offer. I will be simplifying a lot, so the following is not an accurate overview on MLOps.

- Web/Data Scraping: A specialized "crawler" is submitted to SZ which likely schedules and distributes (lightweight) VMs (virtual machines) collect the targeted data sources (for speed and the prevention of throttling). These are used to build large textual/media datasets for training models. OpenAI infamously scraped a large portion of the open web to train its family of GPT LLNs (large language models).

- Data Sources: When datasets get sufficiently large, it's difficult to organize and distribute them to users (machines or people). SZ probably provides an interface to databases (structured data only) or data lakes (all types of data, less structured, like a simplified computer filesystem for very large files on the cloud) that users can stream (Apache Spark/Flink) or download on-demand. The sources can be versioned, provisioned and distributed across multiple servers for added convenience, safety and redundancy.

- Data Pipelines: Raw data usually needs to be prepared before experimentation or training of ML models. In the diagram, they give the example of normalization. E.g. disparate date formats converted to a standard ISO version or numbers min-max normalized to lie in a certain interval (usually [0, 1]). SZ probably interfaces with Apache Airflow, which is a library that allows you chain scripts that do this stuff. These pipelines can be scheduled to run at specified intervals or triggered by programmed events (like new data). They can be processed incrementally or in batches.

- Data Visualization: Processed data from these pipelines are usually cached and written to one of those data sources. Since they mention containers, which are lightweight VMs that can be spun up quickly on the cloud, SZ provides services where you launch one of these containers (there are probably templates) and work on your experiments/analyses on the cloud via a notebook interface. DataBricks and/or Jupyter (Zeppelin) notebooks are probably integrated. Google has Colab, which works similarly, but is closed-source and runs only on their cloud. These notebooks can be used to develop the models, do data analysis and visualization etc. They can be automated as part of a pipeline.

- Training: When a model is ready to be trained, either a notebook or script is submitted to SZ which likely distributes the processing across (multiple) powerful clusters to massively speed up training. It's indicated that SZ provides a dashboard interface that allows users to monitor the progress/health of the training process. The most basic metric of how much you've trained your ML model is the loss function. When the loss is no longer decreasing in sufficiently large steps, you've just about finished training. Below is a screenshot of TensorBoard, which SZ probably provides an interface over. You'll need to report these statistics to SZ in your training script for the monitoring to work, so there's definitely an API (application programming interface) for it.

- Publishing: When your model is ready, it's essentially a massive multidimensional grid of numbers (a Tensor). SZ likely allows users to easily host these models that live on a container image that has, in addition to the model, the necessary server code to respond to web requests (e.g., asking ChatGPT a question) by first transforming said requests into a feature vector (what the grid of numbers will be fed), then reply with a processed response, i.e., the model's prediction. The data blob that forms the model as well as the container are all stored and executed on the same cloud infrastructure as the rest of the features I discussed earlier.

I've worked previously worked in data engineering and data scientist roles, and life was a pain before proper MLOps, so this is definitely a lovely homegrown platform if it matches or approaches Microsoft, Amazon, or Google's offerings. Cheers.

Edit: Safir seems to basically be what I described using Apache and other free and open-source technologies: OpenStack for the cloud infrastructure, Zeppelin for the notebooks, Hadoop/HDFS for distributed computing and data lakes, Spark for processing, Nvidia DIGITS for training etc.

Here are the architecture diagrams for those who're interested:

Here is how Turkish academia was using ML to assist flight envelope protection with active sidesticks way back in 2019, this stuff will make it much easier for users now that it exists:

Z. Ünal, “Simulator based evaluation of adaptive envelope protection algorithms for active sidestick controllers,” Thesis (M.S.) -- Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences. Aerospace Engineering., Middle East Technical University, 2019.

PS: This post should probably be moved to the Science and Tech thread.

 

[Radko]

Sure thing, from what I understand, it's TUBITAK's hand-rolled version of an end-to-end machine learning platform. ML/Data scientists, software engineers at various institutions across Turkey doing critical basic science and (defence) R&D probably used (or wanted to use) commercial MLaaS (Machine Learning as a Service) platforms like Azure ML or Amazon Sagemaker, which pose data ownership issues. It seems Safir Zeka (SZ) covers a lot of what those platforms have to offer. I will be simplifying a lot, so the following is not an accurate overview on MLOps.

- Web/Data Scraping: A specialized "crawler" is submitted to SZ which likely schedules and distributes (lightweight) VMs (virtual machines) collect the targeted data sources (for speed and the prevention of throttling). These are used to build large textual/media datasets for training models. OpenAI infamously scraped a large portion of the open web to train its family of GPT LLNs (large language models).

- Data Sources: When datasets get sufficiently large, it's difficult to organize and distribute them to users (machines or people). SZ probably provides an interface to databases (structured data only) or data lakes (all types of data, less structured, like a simplified computer filesystem for very large files on the cloud) that users can stream (Apache Spark/Flink) or download on-demand. The sources can be versioned, provisioned and distributed across multiple servers for added convenience, safety and redundancy.

- Data Pipelines: Raw data usually needs to be prepared before experimentation or training of ML models. In the diagram, they give the example of normalization. E.g. disparate date formats converted to a standard ISO version or numbers min-max normalized to lie in a certain interval (usually [0, 1]). SZ probably interfaces with Apache Airflow, which is a library that allows you chain scripts that do this stuff. These pipelines can be scheduled to run at specified intervals or triggered by programmed events (like new data). They can be processed incrementally or in batches.

- Data Visualization: Processed data from these pipelines are usually cached and written to one of those data sources. Since they mention containers, which are lightweight VMs that can be spun up quickly on the cloud, SZ provides services where you launch one of these containers (there are probably templates) and work on your experiments/analyses on the cloud via a notebook interface. DataBricks and/or Jupyter notebooks are probably integrated. Google has Colab, which works similarly, but is closed-source and runs only on their cloud. These notebooks can be used to develop the models, do data analysis and visualization etc. They can be automated as part of a pipeline.

- Training: When a model is ready to be trained, either a notebook or script is submitted to SZ which likely distributes the processing across (multiple) powerful clusters to massively speed up training. It's indicated that SZ provides a dashboard interface that allows users to monitor the progress/health of the training process. The most basic metric of how much you've trained your ML model is the loss function. When the loss is no longer decreasing in sufficiently large steps, you've just about finished training. Below is a screenshot of TensorBoard, which SZ probably provides an interface over. You'll need to report these statistics to SZ in your training script for the monitoring to work, so there's definitely an API (application programming interface) for it.

View attachment 62911

- Publishing: When your model is ready, it's essentially a massive multidimensional grid of numbers (a Tensor). SZ likely allows users to easily host these models that live on a container image that has, in addition to the model, the necessary server code to respond to web requests (e.g., asking ChatGPT a question) by first transforming said requests into a feature vector (what the grid of numbers will be fed), then reply with a processed response, i.e., the model's prediction. The data blob that forms the model as well as the container are all stored and executed on the same cloud infrastructure as the rest of the features I discussed earlier.

I've worked previously worked in data engineering and data scientist roles, and life was a pain before proper MLOps, so this is definitely a lovely homegrown platform if it matches or approaches Microsoft, Amazon, or Google's offerings. Cheers.

PS: This post should probably be moved to the Science and Tech thread.

Zamn thanks

 

[Bogeyman]

Fiber optic cables produced at Bilkent University National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) successfully passed critical tests and acceptance and received its first contract from ROKETSAN.


Fiber optic cables, produced at Bilkent University National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM), owned by a few countries in the world and of great importance for many sectors, have successfully passed critical tests and acceptance and started to be used in the local and national defense industry.

Bilkent University UNAM chief researcher Bülend Ortaç, stated that as a result of the latest R&D studies at UNAM, they started to produce polarization protected (PM) fiber optics, which have been produced in only a few countries since the 1980s, and that these have successfully passed all the critical tests required for the defense industry.

Stating that the development of PM fiber optics requires a difficult process, Ortaç said:

"The production of fiber optic cables, which are thinner than a hair strand, requires high technology. Since it is a critical technology, there was no written document in the literature or any source on how to produce the composite structure. That is why the production of fiber optic cables took years. In this process, 130 different "We tried the recipe and eventually succeeded. Thus, Turkey became one of the limited number of countries with this high technology, which is of critical importance especially for the defense industry."

It is of critical importance for land, sea and air platforms.

Ortaç stated that special PM fibers, which can be produced at UNAM in lengths over 100 kilometers at a time, have been developed to meet the needs of different industries, especially the defense industry.

Stating that fibers are used in special areas where critical equipment such as inertial measurement units (IOM) are located on land and air-sea platforms, from the tactical level to the above-navigation level, Ortaç said, "Gyroscopic devices have been developed to control the movement of ships and aircraft. In automatic flight control and route determination in aircraft." "It has important usage areas. Fiber cables are a critical technology for this and many similar platforms." said.

Ortaç gave the following information about the fiber optics they developed:

"The developed fiber optics have an important function in reducing Turkey's foreign dependency in this field. After producing the fibers, we qualified them with our own infrastructure. Then, we worked jointly with companies in the important defense industry organizations of our country. The fibers successfully passed critical tests and acceptance in their own field environments. We also provided the first supply needed by an important defense industry company. In other words, UNAM was one of the sources from which the domestic defense industry met its fiber optic needs. PM fibers are the first commercial product produced by UNAM in its infrastructure with its own resources and expertise. Critical for the defense industry "This technology will increase Turkey's competitiveness in the international arena with domestic production."

"We have the infrastructure to make larger-scale mass production"


UNAM Infrastructure Manager Özgür Yıldırım emphasized that the center is the only organization with fiber production infrastructure in Turkey.

Stating that they made large-scale production of polarization-protected fibers and delivered them to ROKETSAN for the first time, Yıldırım said, "Thus, we have first implemented the critical technology that can be used on all platforms. We have the infrastructure to make larger-scale mass production according to future demands." he said.


Referring to the importance of strategic products in the defense industry, Yıldırım said, "You cannot buy some defense industry products even if you have money. With this strategic product, we have broken foreign dependency and provided millions of dollars of profit to our country. Now, we will have the possibility of selling fiber optics abroad in the future." said.

Explaining that UNAM continues its work within the scope of the 1004 Center of Excellence Support Program, which brings together the public, industry and universities in Turkey with the understanding of TÜBİTAK's "developing together and achieving together", Yıldırım said, "UNAM is the manager within the scope of the program and TUSAŞ, Vestel "The A1 platform, in which Şişecam and Bilkent University, Eskişehir Technical University, Abdullah Gül University and TOBB ETÜ are involved as project executing organizations, aims to bring value-added technologies to our country for domestic and national production purposes with its advanced R&D studies." he said.

Özgür Yıldırım noted that their new goal is to produce special optical fibers for the needs of the industry, including preforms, the raw material of optical fibers.

Türk savunma sanayisinde yerli ve milli fiber optik dönemi

Bilkent Üniversitesi Ulusal Nanoteknoloji Araştırma Merkezinde (UNAM) üretilen fiber optik kablolar, kritik test ve kabullerden başarıyla geçerek yerli ve milli savunma sanayisinde kullanılmaya başlandı. - Anadolu Ajansı

www.aa.com.tr

 

[Quasar]

Fiber optic cables produced at Bilkent University National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) successfully passed critical tests and acceptance and received its first contract from ROKETSAN.


Fiber optic cables, produced at Bilkent University National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM), owned by a few countries in the world and of great importance for many sectors, have successfully passed critical tests and acceptance and started to be used in the local and national defense industry.

Bilkent University UNAM chief researcher Bülend Ortaç, stated that as a result of the latest R&D studies at UNAM, they started to produce polarization protected (PM) fiber optics, which have been produced in only a few countries since the 1980s, and that these have successfully passed all the critical tests required for the defense industry.

Stating that the development of PM fiber optics requires a difficult process, Ortaç said:

"The production of fiber optic cables, which are thinner than a hair strand, requires high technology. Since it is a critical technology, there was no written document in the literature or any source on how to produce the composite structure. That is why the production of fiber optic cables took years. In this process, 130 different "We tried the recipe and eventually succeeded. Thus, Turkey became one of the limited number of countries with this high technology, which is of critical importance especially for the defense industry."

It is of critical importance for land, sea and air platforms.

Ortaç stated that special PM fibers, which can be produced at UNAM in lengths over 100 kilometers at a time, have been developed to meet the needs of different industries, especially the defense industry.

Stating that fibers are used in special areas where critical equipment such as inertial measurement units (IOM) are located on land and air-sea platforms, from the tactical level to the above-navigation level, Ortaç said, "Gyroscopic devices have been developed to control the movement of ships and aircraft. In automatic flight control and route determination in aircraft." "It has important usage areas. Fiber cables are a critical technology for this and many similar platforms." said.

Ortaç gave the following information about the fiber optics they developed:

"The developed fiber optics have an important function in reducing Turkey's foreign dependency in this field. After producing the fibers, we qualified them with our own infrastructure. Then, we worked jointly with companies in the important defense industry organizations of our country. The fibers successfully passed critical tests and acceptance in their own field environments. We also provided the first supply needed by an important defense industry company. In other words, UNAM was one of the sources from which the domestic defense industry met its fiber optic needs. PM fibers are the first commercial product produced by UNAM in its infrastructure with its own resources and expertise. Critical for the defense industry "This technology will increase Turkey's competitiveness in the international arena with domestic production."

"We have the infrastructure to make larger-scale mass production"


UNAM Infrastructure Manager Özgür Yıldırım emphasized that the center is the only organization with fiber production infrastructure in Turkey.

Stating that they made large-scale production of polarization-protected fibers and delivered them to ROKETSAN for the first time, Yıldırım said, "Thus, we have first implemented the critical technology that can be used on all platforms. We have the infrastructure to make larger-scale mass production according to future demands." he said.


Referring to the importance of strategic products in the defense industry, Yıldırım said, "You cannot buy some defense industry products even if you have money. With this strategic product, we have broken foreign dependency and provided millions of dollars of profit to our country. Now, we will have the possibility of selling fiber optics abroad in the future." said.

Explaining that UNAM continues its work within the scope of the 1004 Center of Excellence Support Program, which brings together the public, industry and universities in Turkey with the understanding of TÜBİTAK's "developing together and achieving together", Yıldırım said, "UNAM is the manager within the scope of the program and TUSAŞ, Vestel "The A1 platform, in which Şişecam and Bilkent University, Eskişehir Technical University, Abdullah Gül University and TOBB ETÜ are involved as project executing organizations, aims to bring value-added technologies to our country for domestic and national production purposes with its advanced R&D studies." he said.

Özgür Yıldırım noted that their new goal is to produce special optical fibers for the needs of the industry, including preforms, the raw material of optical fibers.

Türk savunma sanayisinde yerli ve milli fiber optik dönemi

Bilkent Üniversitesi Ulusal Nanoteknoloji Araştırma Merkezinde (UNAM) üretilen fiber optik kablolar, kritik test ve kabullerden başarıyla geçerek yerli ve milli savunma sanayisinde kullanılmaya başlandı. - Anadolu Ajansı

www.aa.com.tr

Great news!!! strange thing is after reading such good news we can understand how infinitly complex any project like KAAN can be, there are endless sub systems and components we have to deal with, every advancment is just a beging.

just as an example these two companies are responsible from F 22's fiber optic components

 

[boredaf]

Domestic arms factory gets stronger with new investment

Yerli silah fabrikası yeni yatırımla güçleniyor

Türk Silahlı Kuvvetlerinin silah, mühimmat ve patlayıcı ihtiyaçlarının yerli imkanlarla karşılanması amacıyla faaliyet gösteren Makine ve Kimya Endüstrisi (MKE) AŞ,

www.savunmatr.com

The capability and capacity of the Çankırı Weapon Factory, which is involved in the production of medium-caliber weapon systems, will be increased with the modernization work.

With the contribution of machinery and equipment investments, at the end of the project, 30 35-millimeter double-barreled anti-aircraft guns, 1000 40-millimeter drum grenade launchers, 400 40-millimeter automatic grenade launchers, 1000 12.7-millimeter anti-aircraft machine guns and 20 105-millimeter BORAN howitzers production capacity will be reached.