More New York Wind Turbine Collapses: Debris Hurled 1/4 Mile, Fire Started in Woods.

[NNadir]

This is a different event than the 187 ton 9 year old wind turbine that collapses a few months ago in Fenner, NY that I covered last night. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x235431">Three million dollar 187 Ton Wind Turbine Crashes From 200 Feet, Waking the Neighbor Across the....


This one involved two failures, and caused a fire.

State investigators from the Public Service Commission are looking into the fiery collapse of a wind power turbine at a turbine farm in Clinton County.



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A preliminary examination by Nobel Environmental Power, owner of the $200 million, 65-turbine Altona Wind Park, and General Electric Co., manufacturer of the 1.5-megawatt turbines, found "wiring anomalies" prevented two turbines from shutting down as designed during a power outage.
On Friday morning, one tower collapsed and started a small fire in snow-covered woods, while the other faulty tower was damaged but remained standing, according to a statement from Noble. Debris from the collapsed tower was flung up to a quarter-mile away, according to published reports. No one was hurt.

PSC officials want Noble and General Electric to share the investigations into the towers, blades and generators, as well as any analysis of how far the debris traveled, commission spokesman James Denn said Wednesday. The state also wants to know how many turbines have been restarted since the incident, and information on wind and other weather around the turbines leading up to the collapse.



Read more:

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=778979&category=REGION#ixzz0htE1LwCF
">PSC probes wind tower collapse, fire.

The turbine functioned for about one year before becoming landfill and garbage. (I wonder if we should count this in wind's already atrocious capacity utilization figures?)

A photo from another website:



In the minds of some people, it would be a good idea to put huge truck bearing roads on top of every mountain ridge in Vermont to build a few tens of thousands of these things. Their proposal involves vandalizing the existing largest single climate change free form of energy in the State of Vermont because of some illiterate scare mongering involving a fear of tritium atoms, although the number of injuries caused by tritium atoms in Vermont is, um, zero.

Zero is a number that is 3 units smaller than the number of failed, burning and crashing windmills in neighboring New York in the last three months and the irony is that New York doesn't even have get very much power from wind.

[w4rma]

1. A wind turbine falls in the woods and it just costs a little money to fix and rebuild. A nuclear

power plant fails and everyone in the United States will be breathing in radiation for the next 10 generations.

Everything eventually fails. It is statistically impossible for them not to.

[TheWraith]

3. One, several million dollars is not "a little money."

Two, your premise is simply false. That's like saying that because it's theoretically possible for there to be nuclear war, then it's automatically a certainty that there WILL be. Along with world-ending plagues, alien invasions, and other horrendously unlikely events.

[Merchant Marine]

12. Wrong

Nuke plants are built under a containment dome that's 10 feet of concrete and steel. Any failure will be contained.

[bergie321]

13. That concrete and steel

Will be made in the same Chinese plant that these windmills were made in.

[Statistical]

14. Concrete will be made ina Chinese plant?

Silly me I thought Concrete hardened with time so it needed to be made close to source.
I also thought for massive projects like this a plant is built on site for concrete can be produced right on site 24/7/365.

So how do they ship this concrete across the ocean without hardening? Is it like a hyrbrid between a mixer truck and a super tanker?

[Merchant Marine]

15. Cement is shipped unmixed, as a powder.

It is loaded and unloaded in bulk, using Archimedes screws or pneumatic loading devices.

[Statistical]

18. Interesting.

However US has even cement capacity to build dozens of reactors a year (especially now as the housing crash has reduced demand for cement).

http://www.cement.org/basics/cementindustry.asp

Given that imports make up only about 10% of the market the NRC (and they may already) can simply mandate that domestic cement be used. It be an easy thing to do to improve quality of our next generation plants.

[w4rma]

20. Hasn't been done, though. And the 'free' traitors will fight it. (nt)

[Nihil]

17. Thanks for making me laugh out loud!

> A nuclear power plant fails and everyone in the United States
> will be breathing in radiation for the next 10 generations.

:spray:
:rofl:

That fits right in with the 48% of Americans who are too dumb to do
anything except breed and consume.

Run away!
:yoiks: :scared: :nuke: :scared: :nuke: :scared:

[w4rma]

19. If you think that then you should go visit Chernobyl. Especially inside the buildings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

You don't think that could happen here? Not even through sabotage?

[wtmusic]

2. I wonder if that turbine even generated enough power to cover

its own construction/removal.

Huh.

[DainBramaged]

4. I wonder where the turbine was made????

[w4rma]

5. China? Most of the green "stimulus" went to manufacture stuff there. (nt)

[joshcryer]

9. Yep, 80% is a number I've seen.

What's disgusting about it is that it went to cheap labor to produce cheap turbines and I'm sure there's no real recourse here. Money just swept away.

[kestrel91316]

6. ZOMG. Did you FORGET to call environmentalists nasty names in your post??

That must be a first.

And you forgot to attack Amory Lovins, too. You're slipping.:rofl:

[Newest Reality]

7. Uh ...

It should be obvious, but this is not about the wind turbines, is it?

We have many tall structures that are capable of withstanding both weight and stress, so we are looking at either poor engineering and or shoddy materials for the supports. I don't think it is rocket science to build a stable, strong support tower that would not be prone to failure in most circumstances and that would last for a pre-estimated amount of time and give signs, (with regular inspection) of needing replacement/repair.

I think it would be a bit hysterical, (but one gets used to mass hysteria based on minutia) to start looking askance at wind powered generators because of this.

Ah, where/who are the regulations/regulators/engineers that passed these towers in the first place? How many more are out there, ready to fail?

And ... has there been any investigation to possible tampering or foul play yet?

[madokie]

8. Just goes to show

No more nukes for you big guy, I think you've had too many already and are getting a might woozy from all the intoxicants
Just think of all the people who were not exposed to this dastardly deed of a wind turbine failing. Could have killed millions.

Oh thats nukes when they fail that do that, sorry

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Well it's a good thing it wasn't a nuke plant.

[Statistical]

11. Why?

Someone posts on DU every single time a failure happens at Western designed nuclear plant.

In every instance the reactor shuts (SCRAM) automatically without damage or radiation release.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7135905

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5003455

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6032323

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5671930

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7646175

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5598616

[tinrobot]

16. Boy, the radioactive fallout from that is going to last years.

Oh, wait...