A massive wind turbine in New York City crashes down onto a car

[NNadir]

(CNN)A recently installed wind turbine came crashing down in a New York City neighborhood, causing a chain reaction on Monday.

As the turbine in the Bronx partially collapsed, it smashed into an adjacent three-sided illuminated billboard, causing that also to break apart and come tumbling down to the street and cars below.
Pictures from the scene shot by Tori McCauseland with The Co-op City Times show a massive pole lying across a mangled car.
"Thankfully we can report that there are no injuries, and everyone is safe and sound," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told CNN affiliate WABC. "An investigation into how this incident happened is underway."
The wind turbine, which is more than 150 feet tall, was installed in mid-December but had not yet been activated, according to WABC.

[rampartc]

1. those things really must be installed properly

but other than causing cancer (lol) and killing birds this is the first real problem I've heard about

[NNadir]

2. If that's all you heard, you probably haven't looked into it all that much. n/t.

[madinmaryland]

4. Ironically I have a long time friend who has been in the nuclear energy business for over thirty

Years. He talks about how dangerous wind power is versus the clean nuclear technology. I guess burying the nuclear ☢️ waste is safer than the exhaust from wind mills and turbines.

[NNadir]

5. There is absolutely no justification for "burying" so called "nuclear waste." None.

The "exhaust" from wind turbines is concerned with the coal used to make steel, the diesel powered trucks and ships required to install them, and then haul them away in 20 years after they've become landfill.

Then of course, there is the surface resins that are adding to plastic waste at sea, the petroleum coke used to make electrodes for aluminum production, and, of course, not that we give a rat's ass about poor people, the nitric acid utilized to refine lanthanide ores in Baotou, etc, etc. The nitric acid is made using dangerous natural gas, generally, sometimes coal in China.

The low energy to mass ratio of wind turbines makes them a popular, but useless tool to "address" climate change, even though the popularity of their industrialization has coincided with a increase of the rate of the dangerous fossil waste carbon dioxide's accumulations in this century to 2.4 ppm from the rate observed at the close of the 20th century, 1.5 ppm per year (ten year averages in both cases.)

The wind industry is nothing more than a fig leaf for the dangerous fossil fuel industry and would die in a New York minute without access to coal, oil and dangerous natural gas.

It will never be as clean and as sustainable as the nuclear industry.

[not_the_one]

9. "without access to coal, oil and dangerous natural gas"

Just another "which comes first, the chicken or the egg" dilemma?

Of course coal, oil and gas must be used to manufacture and deliver the turbines. Until we have replaced ALL the polluting energy sources, it is a necessary evil.

"It will never be as clean and as sustainable as the nuclear industry."???

Can we say Chernobyl and Fukushima? I thought we could. OF COURSE there will be more.

When nuclear goes wrong, it goes wrong in a BIG way.

I suppose we also should forgo solar, too? China produces MASSIVE amounts of pollution being the prime manufacturers... If WE made them, at least we wouldn't have to pollute as much to deliver them to US.

Hell, let's do NOTHING except continue to build more nuclear power plants. What could POSSIBLY go wrong, other than what already has?

[NNadir]

10. Seven million people die each year from air pollution, and you ask me...

...to say "Chernobyl and Fukushima?"

How many people died exactly from radiation at Fukushima? As many people as will die from the next hour from air pollution? That would be about 800 people.

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

If we did nothing but build more nuclear plants, we would save human lives, because on balance, nuclear energy saves lives:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Just because there are people distracted enough, and ignorant enough to care more about Fukushima than they care about the more than 50 million people who died because people don't pay attention to air pollution, doesn't make these people either ethical, informed, or intellectually honest.

Nuclear energy need not be risk free either in reality or in the mind of every fool with a poor education to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy. It only needs to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy, which it is.

Of course, as a person who has studied nuclear energy for more than 30 years in the primary scientific literature, including significant portions of my readings referenced in many of my posts on this website, I am of course familiar with rote nonsense which gets thrown at me all the time by people who actually know next to nothing about energy and the environment, most of whom are blissfully unaware of the contents of science books.

In our world, regrettably and increasingly, we are seeing the triumph of ignorance over reason. We can all laugh bitterly at Trump, and should do so. But more than a few of us should look in the mirror.

So called "renewable energy" - a chimera that remains popular despite a vast, expensive, and frankly toxic failure - will never be as clean, as safe, or as sustainable as nuclear energy.

That's a fact. Facts matter.

[lpbk2713]

3. That driver was extremely lucky.

A half second's difference and it would have been all over.

[JHB]

6. I think it's parked. On edit: yup, it's in a parking lane

But, fortunately nobody else was walking around either.

On edit: Google street view of the site, from August 2018, before the turbine was completed.

[lpbk2713]

8. OK. Thanks.

I couldn't tell.

[Renew Deal]

12. That has happened a lot in NY

On the parkways, streets, homes, sidewalks, roads. And then there is the falling debris from buildings that’s gets people. Bricks, air conditioners, etc.

[smirkymonkey]

7. Just wait for the tweet.

You know we are going to hear about this.

[Renew Deal]

11. Just another day in NYC

Only the strong survive.

[abqtommy]

13. The insurer will probably refuse to cover the damage by saying it was an "Act Of God", y'know,

like having tRUMP for pRESIDENT.