I’ve reported before on new approaches to the “problem” of wind turbine blade recycling.
I put “problem” in quotes, because, like the “problem” of recycling solar panels, the issue exists mainly in the social media disinformation space, egged on by a small army of misinformers and bad actors from various fossil fuel funded “think tanks” and the like.
These flimflammers make a living by relying on the ignorance of the average social media surfer, who has no concept of the scale of current fossil fuel waste streams, especially coal ash, which is the second largest waste stream in the US behind only household garbage.
In the video above, the BBC presenter mentions that wind turbine blades represent a potential 43 million tons of waste by 2050. Sound like a lot?
Only if you don’t understand that we will produce 200 million tons of coal ash, a deadly toxic brew of heavy metals and combustion products, in just the next few months.
Below, researcher Henry Hieslmair breaks it down, making the comparison with another alleged problem, used solar panels.
At the current rate, the US will generate 200 million tonnes of spent fuel in only another thousand years! Very likely by that time they will have figured out how to use the other 99% of the energy in natural uranium, so there could be rather less than that. (Spent fuel has lots of other extremely valuable elements in it as well – for example ruthenium costs over $400 an ounce, rhodium over $4,000 an ounce, and many of the radioisotopes we haven’t even started to figure out everything they could be used for – calling it ‘waste’ is just … wasteful!
I think it is appropriate to call any residue of a process “waste” until it is not just potentially but actively reused or recycled.