Comparison of a wind turbine farm in Eastern Mediterranean turkey with the proposed Akkuyu nuclear power plant in terms of efficiency, costs and tourism impacts

This paper compares a wind turbine farm in Eastern Mediterranean Region of Turkey with the proposed Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in the same region. In this paper, GE 2.5MW-103 wind turbine was examined in the aspects of efficiency, power, costs and environmental and safety impacts. The best way to obtain the maximum power from a wind farm is to build the wind farm on a hill or mountain rather than offshore or urban areas, since the maximum wind speed can be obtained in the mountains in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. A GE 2.5MW-103 wind turbine on the mountains will be expected to produce around 1.6MW power, though comparing with a nuclear power plant, the electricity generated from a wind turbine is relatively low. A wind farm capable of generating the same electricity with a nuclear power plant should contain 9000 wind turbines and cover 23.5% of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey. Building a wind farm of that size will require 40 billion Euros for 25 years of operation while the nuclear power plant will require the same amount for 60 years of operation. One of the biggest concerns of using nuclear energy is its impacts on tourists, since tourism is an important source of income for Turkey. Although major disasters seem to affect tourism and the region vastly, there are only few disasters and chances for another one to happen are very unlikely if everything is done correctly. The minor incidents on the other hand have no known effects on tourism.