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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.
See, these things are dangerous! I've been saying it for years. We'll all be much safer with coal.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
... 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?
I agree that the foundations seem too small, https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... I'm only guessing that after the turbine got struck by lightning last year the feathering control systems were offline as well, i.e.: the turbine blades didn't get feathered against the typhoon's winds.
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.
It reasons that to harvest the wind, you want to get hit by a lot of it intentionally, then translate the force.
If the force goes untranslated, then that intentionally-large input is hard-soaked. Like a large building face. Without a large building foundation for anchor.
So let's assume the blades turn, even if the turbine is offline. The alternative sounds like a bad dumb. On the flip side, newer models seem capable of actively evading extreme wind: >When wind speeds reach a critical level for a turbine, its blades can be twisted, or “feathered,” to reduce the chances of them being caught by the wind.
But that may only apply to active units.
I hope they perform a thorough metallurgical, materials, and design analysis of this failure.
You can see from the video the base of the tower is held onto the foundation with a ring of tension rods or rebar. This is where the failure occurred
Corrosion? Unexpected fatigue loads? Design error (including counting on active blade feathering in a storm for protection, not present since shut down) ? problems with the steel? (alloy composition, heat treatment process, hydrogen embrittlement)
er no, a normal reactor would just melt inside containment and not kill anyone. you have a greatly exaggerate idea of what a failing reactor could do.
you seem to underestimate the stupidity of the design of Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors. It's not normal, most reactors *couldn't* do that.
Wait, what?
They did what?
They covered large portions of Japan with radioactivity that will remain there for hundreds of thousands of years?
Hmm.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It'll take centuries to clean it all up!
First it was struck by lightning.
Second it was blown over by strong winds.
So they'll but a new one up.
That one will be knocked over by an earthquake.
... and sink into a swamp. Just like the castle I built. And the two castles before it. But the fourth one stood up!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
As proof, look at how the winning countries (Germany, Japan) have imposed the stupid metric system upon the USA!
... and sink into a swamp. Just like the castle I built. And the two castles before it. But the fourth one stood up!
You must have huge...tracts of land
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
First, a combination of radioactive decay and natural selection will eventually resolve the issue. It's called radioactive decay because it goes away at some point. Any genetic "damage" that is permanent is not detrimental. You exist today because of a long series of events causing permanent genetic "damage".
Second, Chernobyl did not even meet the safety standards of the day and no one would even consider building another reactor like it today. Using this as an example of safety problems of nuclear power is like saying we should not fly because of structural problems of the de Havilland Comet, or drive a car because of the Ford Pinto fuel tank fires.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's why wind is better than nuclear. Because although it is possible to develop nuclear in a safe way, it will never happen, because humans. The same also applies to wind power.
However, if a wind turbine fails catastrophically, the worst case scenario is that a few cows get beheadded. Maybe.
If a nuclear reactor fails catastrophically, the best case scenario is that hundreds of people die within a few hours, hundreds more die within a few days, weeks or months, thousands of people and families are uprooted, chased from their homes and lose everything, and hundreds if not thousands of square kilometers become inhabitable for tens of thousands of years.
The worst case scenario of a wind turbine failure is not a few cows getting beheaded, it's high winds hitting a windmill, the windmill having a mechanical or electrical failure (from being hit by lightning perhaps), the turbine begins spinning wildly in the wind, the brakes fail and over heat or there's an over voltage on the wiring, there's a spark then a fire, the fire hits the dry vegetation below, the fire spreads, dozens of people are killed fighting the fire, hundreds of people evacuated, homes are destroyed, and large areas rendered desolate for years.
But you say that this doesn't happen often, and I would agree. Just like nuclear meltdowns as you describe don't happen often. Here's the thing though, one nuclear power reactor produces as much energy as 1000 or 1500 windmills. As it is now windmills produce very little of our power and we've already seen incidents like I've described. The power we get from wind now was a rounding error compared to what we got from nuclear power until very recently. How much carnage can we expect from wind power in the future? I doubt it will be only a handful of beheaded bovines.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Looking at the video, at first I saw the pad at the bottom of the tower and thought "Wow, it must have pulled that right off the foundation!"
Then as they panned around, I realized the pad WAS the foundation! Just dirt below it, not so much as a pylon or two. Just two big black cables, probably power and control, going into the dirt under the pad. The entire foundation for the giant turbine was just a (relatively) thin slab of concrete.
There weren't any guy wires either. Just a button of concrete at the bottom. As someone who puts up towers from time to time (amateur radio) I'm not t al surprised that this came down in high winds. That'd be obscenely negligent of me to put up a tower with so little stability. When we plant a tower, it gets a large (often square) block of concrete poured in, several yards if it's a big tower, and self-supporting (no guy wires) always requires more support. You're doing a lot more than just preventing it from sinking into the ground, it's got to provide lateral stability to keep it from moving in high winds. (cube is much better for this than slab) We don't expect anything short of a direct hit from a strong tornado should be able to take them down. And this hurricane was an EF-3 at best. Either drop in a more substantial block of concrete, or guy that baby down, or wind load is gonna take it down eventually.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The Fukushima plant had a nominal production capacity of 4696 MW. Multiplied by nuclear's average 90% capacity factor and that's 4226 MW average for the year. It currently has a 371 km^2 evacuation zone. So the evacuation zone (which is by no means permanent, nor likely to be permanent) works out to 0.088 km^2 per MW average.
The largest wind farm in Europe is Whitelee Wind farm in Scotland. It has a nominal generating capacity of 539 MW. Onshore wind typically has a 20%-25% capacity factor, but Scotland's winds are strong and consistent, yielding an average capacity factor around 40%. So that's 215.6 MW average for the year. The farm covers 55 km^2 in a 13x8 km rectangle. Add a half km exclusion zone around the periphery and you get a total area of 76 km^2. So its exclusion zone works out to 0.353 km^2 per MW on average.
So MW for MW, just the regular operation of the largest wind farm in Europe renders about 4x as much land uninhabitable as the second-worst nuclear accident in history. Hydroelectric dams create a lake behind them, rendering that land uninhabitable. Itaipu dam has a 1350 km^2 reservoir. It generates 91.6 TWh annually, which works out to 10449 MW on average, for an uninhabitable area of 0.129 km^2 per MW average. Solar (pretty much the most expensive power source) actually fares well by this metric. At 125 W/m^2 and a 15% capacity factor, it weighs in at a featherweight 0.053 km^2 per MW on average.
But wait, we looked at pretty much the worst case for nuclear, while looking at average or better-than-average cases for other technologies. What happens if you look at nuclear on average? After all, the vast majority of nuclear plants have operated safely for decades. The world's nuclear capaicty is 351 GW. The evacuation zones around Fukushima (371 km^2) and Chernobyl (2600 km^2) work out to 2971 km^2. So the average land area rendered uninhabitable by nuclear works out to 0.008 km^2 per MW on average.
In other words, nuclear is the technology which renders the least amount of land uninhabitable per MW generated. If you replaced all nuclear power capacity with solar, you'd render 6.6x as much land area as Fukushima + Chernobyl uninhabitable (though I suppose you could be sure to mount all those panels on top of buildings). Hydro would render 16x as much land uninhabitable by converting it into reservoirs. And wind about 44x as much land area uninhabitable (about 80x for a more typical wind far than Whitelee due to lower capacity factor) as a safety zone around the turbines.
The danger zone works out to about 350 meters in radius. Most countries have opted for exclusion zones around 500 meters just to be safe.
That is nonsense.
So the land around a wind turbine is for all practical purposes uninhabitable by humans.
That is nonsense.
In Germany most "on land" (as opposite to "off shore") turbines are simply placed on fields.
https://www.google.de/maps/dir...
So MW for MW, just the regular operation of the largest wind farm in Europe renders about 4x as much land uninhabitable as the second-worst nuclear accident in history. Hydroelectric dams create a lake behind them, rendering that land uninhabitable.
That is complete nonsense.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.