At 05:19 AM 7/7/01, Jeroen wrote:
>At 03:10 6-7-01 -0500, Ronn Blankenship wrote:
>
>>Not to mention when one of the blades breaks off in a high wind and goes
>>flying through the air like an unguided guillotine . . .
>
>If people say they can build something as complex as a safe nuclear
>reactor, surely those people must be capable of building relatively simple
>things like safe windmills, with blades that don't break off...
I suspect that one difference between them is that the nuclear power plants
are manned and monitored continuously (and hopefully Homer Simpson is _not_
representative of the typical employee), while windmill farms are generally
built in rather remote locations.
There is a windmill farm out near Laramie, Wyoming, that is visible off to
the north from I-80. When I was out that way last May, the interstate
between Cheyenne and Laramie was closed temporarily due to a snowstorm just
as I got to Cheyenne, so I had to take a back road that allowed me to get a
view of the windmills from the other side. I was rather surprised when I
noticed how many of them were not turning and how many had one or more
blades missing. I suspect that it is so difficult to do maintenance on
them during the winter that they have to just let things break and then try
to fix all of it during the summer. I did kinda wonder where the missing
blades landed, though . . .
-- Ronn! :)
