Wind Turbine Graveyard
Here is your "clean energy!"
So much for clean
power; note the size of the bulldozer burying the blades in comparison to the
blades.
"Welcome to the
wind turbine graveyard. It stretches a hundred meters {328 feet} from a
bend in the North Platte River in Casper, Wyoming.
California, Colorado,
Kansas, and many other states are doing the same thing, the fiberglass blades
will never deteriorate {not biodegradable}.
Between last September
and this March, it will become the final resting place for 1,000 fiberglass turbine blades.
These blades, which
have reached the end of their 25-year working lives, come from three wind farms
in the north-western US state. Each will be cut into three, then the pieces
will be stacked and buried.
Turbines from the
first great 1990s wave of wind power are reaching the end of their life
expectancy today. About two GigaWatts worth of turbines will be refitted
in 2019 and 2020. And disposing of them in an environmentally-friendly
way is a growing problem.
This cost taxpayers $200,000 or more per unit, or 200 million total for the 1000 blades,
to have them transported and decommissioned.
1 comment:
Seems a very small price to pay and land to use after 25 years of service, particularly when compared to the price and land use of coal ash tailings management and that's not counting the cost and land destruction of many tailings dam failures.
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