When I was in the power industry, “life extension” was a common strategy for power plants nearing the end of the their 30 year design life span. We usually could extend the life out to 50 years without major investments. Plants I started up in the early 70s were decommissioned 30 to 40 years later and sometimes they were carefully reassembled, sold to other countries, and reassembled there to finish their lives. If the entire plant wasn’t sold, the value of the scrap steel was high and it was recycled. There was almost nothing in a conventional power plant that could not be easily recycled. Even the concrete floors and the asphalt parking lots were crushed for re-use in new asphalt and concrete.
No such “life extension” will be possible with wind turbines or solar cells. In fact, when the companies go bankrupt, the towers will stand forever mute as testaments to the utter energy insanity of the early 21st century. Millions of tons of concrete buried in the ground will stay there forever and the towers will finally rust and fall after decades or centuries. Meanwhile, those towers will stand as useless sentinels across our beautiful country as a testament to our energy folly.
It really hacks me off because no coal mine can be opened without the developer paying a huge surety bond up front that the land will be restored when the mine is closed decades in the future. No such surety bonds are paid for the monstrous wind turbines. Eventually, it will take a massive Superfund III to tear all the defunct wind turbine towers down.
That is a great summary of what lies ahead. Thank you for posting it!
Nonsense. Wind turbines are repowered all the time and end-of-life responsibilities are part of permitting.
We drove out west a few years ago. Turbines everywhere. Every ridge across Oklahoma, Texas and so forth all the way to Oregon. My wife marveled having never seen them and began asking questions as we traveled. Not a wind turbing expert but I am an engineer and I read a lot. She asked about what they were made of, how much maintenance they required, the hazards to them and how long they last. I told her about fatigue of the blades and how eventually they would crack or shatter leaving the reinforcing strands of glass fiber or graphite fabric blowing in the wind if they were not replaced. She asked about repairing them, nope, recycling them, not yet nobody has found a use though one outfit is working on making pellets for something out of them.
We drove on and she began to laugh as we saw yet another ridge line of turbines. I asked her why she laughed. She said she was imagining them strung out with the shattered and tattered blades flapping in the wind. Decrepit and abandoned eye sores.
It is coming. I hope someone ends this insanity before it goes far too far.
True! The French are busy extending the life of their nuclear power plants. Due to Putin cutting off gas to Europe.
Even if conventional power plants (coal, gas) here were abandoned after they are decommissioned... That would be one small eyesore in a small space. Not likes hundreds of acres of abandoned hulking windmills. and their concrete bases.
Second that!~!!!