Decommissioning turbines is costly
Readers' letters | Edinbugh Evening News | 2nd July 2021 | www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com
Readers' letters | Edinbugh Evening News | 2nd July 2021 | www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com
The difficulty in recycling wind turbine is an environmental problem nobody seems to have thought of.
Take France for instance. There are 300 wind turbines within a kilometre of each other, all over the north of an area called Hérault.
A 2MW wind turbine weighs 1688 tons: 1300 tons concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons iron, 24 tons fibreglass (which is not recyclable) four tons copper, 0.4 tons neodymium and 0.65 tons dysprosium.
Mining for rare metals in foreign countries creates environmental and health problems and toxic lakes.
At the end of a wind farm’s life of 25 or 30 years, conditions set down by the planning process require the blades and towers to be broken up and disposed of.
The problem is that the blades contain highly toxic products and cannot be put into landfill or incinerated.
Michael Baird, Bonar Bridge.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/07/02/decommissioning-turbines-is-costly/