Friday, February 29, 2008

A Safe Alternative Energy Source?

A 100-meter tall wind turbine meets a 100-kph breeze.

6 comments:

TheMindFantastic said...

While thats a quite dramatic video, its interesting that the turbine had braking difficulties and thus couldn't keep the spin in check. No one was hurt during the incident, which is good... its good that we have the occasional disaster like this actually (where no one is hurt) to make people aware of situations like this, so we know not to go into the wind farm area during intense winds... just in case. Wouldn't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater...

Jil Wrinkle said...

Of course... I didn't mean to call into question the benefit or long-term safety of wind power. It's obviously one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy. It's just one of those instances where something incredibly beneveloent becomes so dangerous... like "When gerbils attack!!!" or something.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I didn't expect it to explode like that. Reminded me of an experiment I saw once where they spun a CD at extreme speeds to see when it would explode, but on a much bigger scale.

Even with this occasional mishap though wind power is still a great alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear. No pollution and even if it does explode like this one did there is no fallout.

Anonymous said...

"No pollution and even if it does explode like this one did there is no fallout." Where do you get the idea there is no pollution from WT? How do you think they make the materials to fabricate them or the energy to erect them or all the concrete (a major GHG source) that go into their massive underground bases. Also, in Germany alone, they kill ~1,000,000 birds. I certainly don't consider them environmnetally benign - see The dark side of windfarms : www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=1228
Pictures of windfarm victims ( eagles etc. ), of turbines on fire, of collapsed turbines, of soil & water contamination etc. : http://spaces.msn.com/mark-duchamp

Anonymous said...

A lot less damage than a nuke plant going up

Anonymous said...

Great video!