Nantucket Wind Turbine Flings a 40 ft Blade After 10 Months. Organic Farm Owner Sues for $1.5M

[NNadir]

With its new 100-foot-tall windmill still broken and idle, Bartlett’s Ocean View Farm has sued its manufacturer and the company which installed the turbine in Nantucket Superior Court, seeking $1.5 million in damages.


One of the windmill’s 40-foot-long blades broke in half in moderate winds some time after dark Jan. 18, the broken piece plummeting to the ground where it landed nearly 175 feet away from the turbine. No one was hurt in the nighttime incident, but Bartlett’s Farm now alleges that the manufacturer of the windmill, Wind Energy Solutions (WES), of the Netherlands, knew of a design defect in the turbine model, and intentionally concealed the possible danger by negligently misrepresenting its product...

...The WES windmill at Bartlett’s Farm became operational in March 2009, and over the next 10 months, provided the farm with roughly 80 percent of its electrical power, according to the lawsuit, and “also supplied electrical power to the local grid for which (Bartlett’s Farm) earned profits.” John Bartlett, who is heading up the farm’s alternative-energy efforts, had expected the windmill to pay for itself after four to five years. The $1 million price tag was lessened by a $260,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture and a $425,000 grant from the Massachusetts Technical Collaborative.

Bold is mine. Your tax dollars at work.

http://www.ack.net/bartlettslawsuit031110.html">Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, March 12

Here's a picture of the useless windmill, for which your government paid $260,000 - an amount that could have provided health care for about 15 uninsured families:



Of course, none of this compares to the possibility that there is a tritium atom somewhere out there in that ocean.

Here's a picture of the windmill - still posted on the farm's website - before it blew apart:



http://www.bartlettsfarm.com/">Bartlett's Farm

[thereismore]

1. Things happen. Toyotas hurl themselves forward, nuclear reactors melt down.

Gotta hold the corporations accountable.

[hedgehog]

4. Come to think if it - aren't power companies protected from law suits associated with

any damages caused by nuclear power plants?

[Statistical]

8. Then why do they have $10.3 billion in insurance?

They need insurance to protect against lawsuits that they are protected from?
I mean where do people come up with this stuff.

Price-Anderson requires each nuclear utility to have $300 million insurance policy per reactor.
What is the $300 million insurance policy used for? To pay claims against the utility that might arise for operation of nuclear reactor.

Price-Anderson also requires that utilities all contribute to a combined $10 billion catastrophic loss funds. What would the fund be used for? To pay claims beyond the $300 mil insurance coverage that might arise from operation of nuclear reactor.

[JohnWxy]

23. Price-Anderson Act: The Billion Dollar Bailout for Nuclear Power Mishaps

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Price%20Anderson%20Factsheet.pdf

(all emphases my own_JW)

The Price-Anderson Act bestows a twofold subsidy on the nuclear industry. First, the Act artificially limits the amount of primary insurance that nuclear operators must carry – an uncalculated indirect subsidy in terms of insurance premiums that they don’t have to pay. This distorts electricity markets by masking nuclear power’s unique safety and security risks, granting nuclear power an unfair and undesirable competitive advantage over safer energy alternatives. Second, Price-Anderson caps the liability of nuclear operators in the event of a serious accident or attack, leaving taxpayers on the hook for MOST (my emphasis_JW) of the damages. This makes capital investment in the nuclear industry more attractive to investors because their risk is minimized and fixed.

Consequently, the Act is a dual-edge sword for the public that it purportedly protects. The legislation was intended first of all to bolster investor confidence, whereas victim compensation is secondary. Price-Anderson establishes only phantom insurance for the public, then provides a real bailout mechanism for the nuclear energy industry by reducing its need to pay for insurance, subsidizing the industry at the taxpayers' expense.

If proposed new reactors are as safe and economical as the nuclear industry claims, the industry should be able to privately insure these ventures without an extension of the Price-Anderson crutch. When Congress first enacted Price-Anderson in 1957, it was designed to be a temporary measure to prop up an infant industry. After nearly five decades and billions in hand-outs, it is impossible to justify extending subsidies like the Price-Anderson Act.

Price-Anderson expired for new reactors in December 2003, but was reauthorized for another 20 years in the energy bill that was signed into law on August 2005.

[Ian David]

11. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act

The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act (commonly called the Price-Anderson Act) is a United States federal law, first passed in 1957 and since renewed several times, which governs liability-related issues for all non-military nuclear facilities constructed in the United States before 2026.

The main purpose of the Act is to partially indemnify the nuclear industry against liability claims arising from nuclear incidents while still ensuring compensation coverage for the general public. The Act establishes a no fault insurance-type system in which the first $10 billion is industry-funded as described in the Act (any claims above the $10 billion would be covered by the federal government).

At the time of the Act's passing, it was considered necessary as an incentive for the private production of nuclear power — this was because investors were unwilling to accept the then-unquantified risks of nuclear energy without some limitation on their liability.

The Act has been criticized by a number of groups, including many consumer protection groups. In 1978, the Act survived a constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court case Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group (see below). The Act was last renewed in 2005 for a 20-year period.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

[TheMadMonk]

12. They are protected from acts of God. Demonstrable mismanagement...

...or negligence are different matters.

[NNadir]

15. No. They are forced to pay huge amounts of insurance, far beyond the risk they represent.

That risk, given the fact in the 50 year history of commercial nuclear power, there have been zero deaths, is experimentally zero.

Nuclear power exceptionalism is a vanity put together by people with no technical insight.

The number of anti-nukes who don't give a fuck that dangerous fossil fuel companies actually kill people with various dangerous fossil fuel related disease and accidents and don't pay a dime to the victims is zero.

[kristopher]

17. There are 0.69 deaths/TWH associated with nuclear fuel cycle.

It is much, much higher than renewables.

Of course, that number doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of deaths from Chernobyl - it is JUST the fuel cycle.

[johnnie]

2. "which installed the turbine in Nantucket Superior Court"

No wonder it broke, they shouldn't have installed it in a courthouse.

[hedgehog]

3. This is a case of poor manufacturing and/or poor design.

And yes, you are correct - I'd rather worry about flying turbine blades I can see than tritium leaking from an underground pipe the current owner of the plant has no idea exists.

[Lochloosa]

5. Chinese metal.

[Blues Heron]

6. "a tritium atom"

riiiight...

[uppityperson]

7. Manufacturer & installer should be sued. I have no problem with energy grants though

Giving grants to encourage use of wind power seems like a good thing. I hope they get WES to fix their product.

[Double T]

9. WES needs to fix the turbine blade and get the wind turbine back online.

Why does stuff like this always end up in litigation? Manufacturer and installer are liable for repairs. The world can not have enough wind turbines.

[Mopar151]

10. Par for the course for this poster

Any chance to smear wind, solar, or anything but nukes = good

Any news about shaky old reactors being shut down on schedule = bad

[bergie321]

13. Nuclear Plant Construction

Would never use the lowest (chinese) bidder to provide materials/parts......

[Javaman]

14. Meh. better than a toxic melt down cloud floating across a land poisoning everything

in it's path.

While in this incident, (from the article), "No one was hurt".

So your point is? Pointing out how an accident from a wind turbine is so much less hazardous than say a toxic pipe leaking radiation into the ground water? (Yankee utilities)

That's why I don't block you, you do more to help the wind industry than to hurt it.

And for that, I say thanks!!! LOL

[Statistical]

16. "toxic melt down cloud floating across a land poisoning everything"

Remind me again.

How many times has this happened in the US?

[kristopher]

18. How long have terrorists been working to build our nuclear plants?

[Mopar151]

26. If you are talking domestic terrorists, quite a while.

[Javaman]

19. many a turbine blade can be flung into oblivion, while

all it takes is one melt down.

Yeah, turbines are soooo (queue the ominous music) scary. Mooohooohahahahaha...

Sorry, but I fear turbines much much less than I do a nuclear reactor. Oh, one other thing, while on the topic, I have no problem with storing wind turbine waste in my basement. How about you?

[Statistical]

20. Why would you store any toxic waste in your basement?

Do you store all your human waste their too?
Seems kinda stupid to store waste (any waste) where people live.

Then again even if 100% of my power came from nuclear power all the waste in my lifetime would weight about 1kg.

So if I had to store my lifetimes worth of waste putting a coffee can's worth of waste into a lead block in my backyard would work fine for me.

[Merchant Marine]

21. I dunno if you've ever worked with industrial lubricant

But that stuff is nasty.

[Mopar151]

25. Well, you could start with this incedent in Utah

From the newspaper column/website/empire of knowledge, THE STRAIGHT DOPE by Cecil Adams



My girlfriend says that half of the film crew and eight of the cast of the movie The Conqueror starring John Wayne died of cancer after an A-bomb test in Nevada. It can't be the truth--that many people--can it? Please, Cecil, give us the Straight Dope.

— John L., Santa Monica, California

Cecil replies:

I'm horrified to have to report this, John, but your girlfriend's claim is only slightly exaggerated. Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. Experts say under ordinary circumstances only 30 people out of a group of that size should have gotten cancer. The cause? No one can say for sure, but many attribute the cancers to radioactive fallout from U.S. atom bomb tests in nearby Nevada. The whole ghastly story is told in The Hollywood Hall of Shame by Harry and Michael Medved. But let's start at the beginning.

The Conqueror, a putative love story involving Genghis Khan's lust for the beautiful princess Bortai (Hayward), was a classic Hollywood big budget fiasco, one of many financed by would-be movie mogul Howard Hughes. Originally director Powell wanted to get Marlon Brando for the lead, but John Wayne, then at the height of his popularity, happened to see the script one day and decided he and Genghis were meant for each other. Unfortunately, the script was written in a cornball style that was made even more ludicrous by the Duke's wooden line readings. In the following sample, Wayne/Genghis has just been urged by his sidekick Jamuga not to attack the caravan carrying Princess Bortai: "There are moments fer wisdom, Juh-mooga, then I listen to you--and there are moments fer action--then I listen to my blood. I feel this Tartar wuh-man is fer me, and my blood says, 'TAKE HER!'" In the words of one writer, it was the world's "most improbable piece of casting unless Mickey Rooney were to play Jesus in The King of Kings."

The movie was shot in the canyonlands around the Utah town of St. George. Filming was chaotic. The actors suffered in 120 degree heat, a black panther attempted to take a bite out of Susan Hayward, and a flash flood at one point just missed wiping out everybody. But the worst didn't become apparent until long afterward. In 1953, the military had tested 11 atomic bombs at Yucca Flats, Nevada, which resulted in immense clouds of fallout floating downwind. Much of the deadly dust funneled into Snow Canyon, Utah, where a lot of The Conqueror was shot. The actors and crew were exposed to the stuff for 13 weeks, no doubt inhaling a fair amount of it in the process, and Hughes later shipped 60 tons of hot dirt back to Hollywood to use on a set for retakes, thus making things even worse.

Many people involved in the production knew about the radiation (there's a picture of Wayne himself operating a Geiger counter during the filming), but no one took the threat seriously at the time. Thirty years later, however, half the residents of St. George had contracted cancer, and veterans of the production began to realize they were in trouble. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney only four years after the movie was completed, and later shot himself when he learned his condition was terminal.

Howard Hughes was said to have felt "guilty as hell" about the whole affair, although as far as I can tell it never occurred to anyone to sue him. For various reasons he withdrew The Conqueror from circulation, and for years thereafter the only person who saw it was Hughes himself, who screened it night after night during his paranoid last years.

— Cecil Adams

[Merchant Marine]

22. I don't think meltdowns work that way.

Please elaborate on how the meltdown will breach containment. 10 feet of concrete and steel would take one hell of a steam explosion. (Chernobyl would have been totally contained if the Soviets had shelled out for a contemporary western-style containment building)

[bergie321]

24. You think

Of course it hasn't been tested. Would you pile your family into the car and have a picnic outside a plant that just contained a meltdown?

[phantom power]

27. k+r