Aren't wind turbine blades made of generally annoying/nasty stuff such as various interesting epoxy components and glass fiber?
I've seen how sick working with manufacturing can make people, so I'm not sure I'd want kids exposed, since they'll crawl around on them and touch them, likely wearing the material down and releasing small particles that may get into the skin or airways.
An NPR article on the topic: "Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy"<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste...</a><p>"...Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass — similar to what spaceship parts are made from — are a different story.<p>'The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value,' he said.<p>Decommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to transport. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut up onsite before getting trucked away on specialized equipment — which costs money — to the landfill. ..."
Airplane Park in San Francisco used to be a literal airplane. It was a F-8 Crusader jet with its guts scooped out.<p><a href="https://sfrecpark.org/project/larsen-park-jet-playground/" rel="nofollow">https://sfrecpark.org/project/larsen-park-jet-playground/</a>
Maybe we should start (or better return to) making the blades from wood.<p><a href="https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines...</a>
I know that material fatigues over time, but 225,000 tons of turbine blades annually sounds excessive. Why so much waste?<p>Couldn't older ones be retro-fitted with newer rotating internal components to extend the life of the structural components and the blades? I just can't see such a massive structure being discarded just to be replaced with a unit which is probably very similar.
I was curious how the playground looked in use, a question well-answered by this profile discussing the project that I found on YouTube: <a href="https://youtu.be/V4C4RQcyrSo" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/V4C4RQcyrSo</a>
Wish we could do something similar with solar cells. Seems to me, that some sections could be used to make streamlined coffins -- so you can slip into the afterlife a little faster. Maybe a blade tip could be placed on a turret of a ship, so as to generate a little extra push, in much the same way sails did a century ago. I suppose that such material would make excellent berm material when constructing levees. The list goes on...
It looks nice and I can appreciate the story, but saying « discarded » makes it sound like it has no value, but Scrap structural steel definitely does.<p>> designed the Wikado Playground to address the issue of saving out-of-service wind turbines from landfill.<p>Nononono.