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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.
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)
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's incorrect that newer models have this revolutionary (pun intended) "feathering", when the problems of too high a wind speed for safe operation have been known and dealt with for centuries by every country with windmills. You lock / brake and feather and hope for the best.
Jill windmill (Clayton Hill, Sussex) had similar issues in October 1987, when the hurricane force winds defeated the brake. Due to the sweeps being not of a kind that could be feathered (not that it would have made much difference anyway), they still turned causing massive friction against the brake and ultimately caused a fire that threatened to engulf the entire wooden structure. It wasn't easy to put that one out.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
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!
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.