Snopes dealt with the question of whether windmill blades were buried in a landfill in Casper, Wyoming. Snopes said, “It is true that there is a landfill in Casper, Wyoming, that does accept decommissioned and damaged wind turbine blades and motors, both of which are not recyclable. However, it is important to highlight that up to 90% of a wind turbine is recyclable. That one-tenth of a windmill is not recyclable does not necessarily negate its overall green energy production over the course of its 20- to 25-year lifetime.”
Snopes has a way of twisting reality.
The blades have to be buried at the end of their lifespan. There is no alternative.
Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled and are piling up in landfills. There are only a few landfills in the country that accept decommissioned blades.
According to Bloomberg, companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives.
A wind turbine’s blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan, they can’t just be hauled away. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.
The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to an end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones, says Bloomberg writer Chris Martin.
Currently, there are no plans to dispose of the plates in an environmentally friendly way.
The current process for getting rid of these blades is to pile them up and cover them with dirt like a mass grave.
Tossing these massive 120-foot pieces of fiberglass is incredibly wasteful and antithetical to the green aspect of this energy source.
The Casper regional landfill will accept 1000 of these blades, and then they’ll shut it down.
Each turbine blade needs between 30 and 44.8 ft. of landfill space. They run out of space fairly quickly. And there are no plans to deal with the problem of disposal.
You have to bury them and will soon run out of blade burial grounds.
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thats a pantload put em through a shredder its plastic and can be used as construction material
There is no way to dispose of radioactive waste or toxic fly ash from burning coal.
Fly ash is used in concrete. Disposal of radioactive waste starts with reprocessing to get the fissile material left for inclusion in fuel elements. What is left will fill a very small volume and incasing it in vitrified materials renders it safe.
Do the math, They cost $4,000,000/widndmill. At best they generate $100,000/year of electricity. So at 25 years, they still cost more than $1.5 million more than they generated. What a waste of our money!!
Do the math or rely on world-renown financiers and energy researchers like Lazard, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and Lawrence Berkeley Labs to do it for you. Wind power is cheaper than fossil fuels or nuclear energy. So is solar PV.
I wouldn’t trust your references to get a passing grade on a fifth grade arithmetic test.
That “analysis” completely ignores the cost of the required 100% backup by conventional energy, because they only produce power 20-25% of the time. It’s like saying you can save lots of money by buying a car that only works 20% of the time without considering the cost of the other car that actually works 100% of the time. LOL
No it isn’t, Jack. You should wake up. Really. The world is going back to fossile fuels. From Sweden to Germany the game is up. China never went stupid. Coal plants being ordered left and right. Nuclear plants being built.
Without massive subsides there would be very few wind farms or solar farms. They just don’t make economic or technical sense. Don’t even go to EVs. What a total joke. You have just about reached peak stupid on EVs. Ford loses tens of thousand of dollars on everyone they build. Chev loses. EV companies going under. You want something so bad it hurts. But what you want does not exist. You live in terror, or the future but you have no solution.
Your dream is based on massive subsidies and a people willing to have their energy turned off when needed.
But your reality is what you do to all those poor little black kids who spend their short lived getting lithium and cobalt and other minerals for you to feel good. You feel so very good, as they die needless deaths for pennies a day. You turn away and ignore all the suffering.
You remind me of that idiot who wrote “Silent Spring.” Ohhhhh so very pure of heart. Except for the 2 million or so children that die every year from increased malaria. So pure, so clean, so murderous. yes yes, doesn’t happen does it? CNN told you that. All those graves of those African kids are just empty.
Those “world renowned” don’t mind twisting the figures to get the answers they want. After all the costs are included, so-called green energy is not cheaper, nor is it cleaner.
As always, the enviro-nuts ignore the ugly truths about so-called “green” energy. When I taught middle school science, our textbooks would give the rosy side of going green. I felt it my duty to inform my students about the ugly side of the life-cycle analysis, which includes the costs and risks of disposal. During my research, I found a story about a company in Europe that repurposed old turbine blades into playground equipment. Fine. Just how many playgrounds are we going to need? Another article was on a guy from the US who started a company that turned the turbine blades into fiberglass pellets. At the time of printing, he wasn’t sure if there was even a market for these pellets, much less whether or not he could turn a profit from it. I kept searching for articles on recycling fiberglass for the next six years until I retired, and the only relevant hit was always this same article that had never been updated. However, I WAS able to find plenty of photos of chopped up blades sitting in the desert, just waiting to be buried.
What is your opinion of acidic, toxic radioactive tailings from uranium mining being used to pave roads and children’s playground on indigeneous peoples’ territories, middle school science teacher? How about your opinion on fly ash lagoons?
After reading some of your comments, my feeling is that you aren’t smart enough to pass my 6th grade class.
Launch the old blades into low orbit. They’ll burn up on re-entry. It should only cost a couple billion per blade. Problem solved. Biden style.
nah, they should do the same thing you’re supposed to do with old car batteries. go down to the beach and throw them into the ocean.