"Jazz" Shaw?
Same with solar panels, what happens to those solar farms when they wear out.
I read a detailed study on this 20 year life problem. Given the difficulty of recycling the beasts, a 20 year life is too short to make it economical. Gas fired plants on small plots of land cost less and last a lot longer.
Another dirty little secret is that the rapid advances in efficiency and cost effectiveness of both wind and solar are coming to an end, as they approach some hard physical limits.
A fundamental physics problem. Theoretical limits.
They have a little further to improve, but the large and easy gains are already behind us.
"Jazz" Shaw?
I’m not a fan (pun intended!) of wind power because they are eyesores, a hazard to birds, and cost a fortune to maintain.
Heh,so we’ve got an intermittent energy source that’s:
1. Expensive to install
2. Expensive to maintain
3. Even more expensive to remove
All while being unreliable.
Sounds like Hillary.
More pearl clutching panty wadding nonsense. The plastics industry has been working on recycling processes and several are now in commercial production. They chop up the blades on-site to fit into semi trucks and haul them to the recycling center where 2-3 tons per day can be processed into new usable fiberglass-reinforced thermoplastic pellets and sheets:
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2019/03/27/company-expands-wind-turbine-recycling-operation/
And they’ll also do fiberglass from boats, planes and other sources in the waste stream. How much fiberglass waste just got created last week in the hurricane? That happens all the time, turbine blades last 20 years. So in reality the wind industry has provided the motivation for development of fiberglass recycling that will end up keeping not only turbine blades but other waste out of landfills.
American ingenuity.
Windmills are an icon of the left. That enables them to act on emotion, and not on reason. It’s feeeels good to force people to use windmills even though they make horrible noises and slice birds to pieces.
The end goal is to destroy our industrial civilization that is based on petroleum products. What’s a few birds if it brings down a mighty civilization?
They don’t talk about all the birds they kill. Shame on these people.
In retirement, I’ve taken up photography. My once pristine Eastern Washington is now visually polluted with countless turbines.
20 years ago had you built a house in many of the places these now are, you’d be stoned into submission by the tree huggers for blighting the open spaces.
They are not majestic. They are an eye sore.
Those that are serious about clean power have one choice: Nuclear.
Whoop-de-doo, we dispose of 73,000 tons of straws per year.
What a weird article. I’m not a big fan of wind; I think (over and above the commonly cited issues) they generate pressure waves that are very unhealthy for those nearby. (within a mile or so)
“an attractive investment for companies such as Budweiser and Hormel Foods...
Huh?
As for recycling the blades, that’s very low tech and a solution will be found.
They wreck the views of the country side and cause lots of noise for people nearby and slice and dice many birds plus does not produce much power especially during a calm day.
They kill huge numbers of migratory birds — many of them endangered. But your typical enviro never seems to consider this. That & the fact that every solar or wind farm needs back up fossil fuel plants to carry peak loads when the sun ain’t shining and the winds aren’t blowing (or are blowing so hard the blades need to be locked).
“The tour came as additional details have come to light regarding another advanced fusion reactor program at Lockheed Martin, which recently obtained a patent for portions of its own design.”
Fusion reactors will blow all these other power generation sources away.
Giant UGLY turbine blades. These things are visual pollution as well as bird Cuisinarts.
Not to mention that the fiberglass resins used in windmills are extremely nasty chemical in origin.