Strong Wind Topples a Wind Turbine in Japan (digitaltrends.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Strong gusts brought by Typhoon Cimaron on Friday, August 24, toppled a massive wind turbine in western Japan, local media reported. The 60-meter-tall turbine was located in a park on Awaji Island, 275 miles west of Tokyo, but was wrenched from its base in the early hours of Friday morning as the typhoon pummeled a large part of the Japanese archipelago. Fortunately no one was under the wind turbine when it came down, or indeed on it. Built in 2002, the turbine had been out of commission since May last year after being struck by lightning, according to the Japan Times. News footage showed how the turbine had been torn from its base by the strong winds, with its 20-meter-long blades badly damaged by the impact with the ground. It's not yet clear if the base had been weakened in some way prior to the typhoon.

Comments

Still safer then nuclear ...

[UnknownSoldier]

... at least it didn't contaminate the ground for 20+ years, tragedy aside.

Does anyone know how much power it provided while it was in service?

How of much of Japan is getting their power from wind?

Re:Still safer then nuclear ...

[Anonymous Coward]

An average wind turbine has a rated output of about 3 MW. So that's 3 megawatt-hours if it runs for an hour, lets say it runs flat out for a year (with magical always-on wind), producing a grand total of 26.28 gigawatt-hours of power. But they last more than a year! Lets assume it's been running for twenty years, why that's 525.6 gigawatt-hours. That sounds like a lot!

Now lets see about your nuclear boogyman. Fukushima Daiichi had six reactors, the smallest of which (Unit 1) with a rated output of 460 MW (The largest was 1100). If Unit 1 had been online, running flat-out for twenty years (with magical, always-on ... nuclear... fission-stuff, arguably more easily achievable than the always-on wind...)? That's 80 terawatt-hours, or 80,059.2 gigawatt-hours.

Lets put that in watts, so the point really sinks home:
000,525,600,000,000 watt-hours
vs
080,590,200,000,000 watt-hours.

That's a difference of one hundred and fifty two times. More than two orders of magnitude.

I'll take your slight 20+year ground contamination risk any day of the week, for the footprint reduction alone.

Re:That's why wind is better than nuclear

[Jzanu]

Transgenerational accumulation of radiation damage in small mammals chronically exposed to Chernobyl fallout. The genetic damage is permanent and hereditary, and is expressed even in animals raised in labratory but that whose parents were exposed. Through 10+ generations.

Good thing nuclear reactors are safe

[WillAffleckUW]

Wait, what?

They did what?

They covered large portions of Japan with radioactivity that will remain there for hundreds of thousands of years?

Hmm.