Meme: Wind turbines found to have asbestos.
Reality: meh
Australian Broadcasting (ABC):
A second company has confirmed the presence of white asbestos in wind turbine lift brake pads imported from Chinese company 3S Industry.
International renewable energy company Vestas, which has 44 wind farms across the country, recorded a positive test for asbestos in brake pads at its Golden Plains wind farm in regional Victoria, about 130 kilometres west of Melbourne.
It was previously revealed energy company Goldwind Australia, responsible for about 5 per cent of the country’s renewable energy, had found asbestos in lift brake pads used across its wind farms.
The brake pads are used in lifts that enable technicians to travel up and down turbine towers.
In a statement, a Vestas spokesperson said 3S Industry told Vestas the lift pads it supplied may contain asbestos.
“Vestas has taken immediate action to ensure that the limited number of turbines that may have a risk of exposure to asbestos are quarantined, and hoists potentially replaced while further investigations are carried out,” the spokesperson said.
“Vestas maintains a zero-tolerance policy on the use of asbestos in our purchase specification, and the supplier has taken responsibility for not adhering to our policy.
The importation of asbestos or goods containing asbestos, has been illegal in Australia since 2003.
The ABC understands Chinese supplier 3S Industry provides lift brake pads to the majority of wind turbine operators in Australia.
Goldwind Australia said in a statement that health and safety was the company’s top priority and the asbestos was found through “proactive” testing at its Cattle Hill wind farm in Tasmania
3S Industry has been contacted for comment.
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After white asbestos was found in brake pads at its Cattle Hill wind farm in Tasmania, Goldwind Australia said it disabled access to the inside of all its Australian turbines, excluding asbestos removalist professionals.
The company said asbestos removal teams would be engaged to safely swap out the brake pads.
State regulators launched investigations in a national response to the incident.
Goldwind Australia said occupational hygienists had deemed the asbestos brake pads were a low risk to the public.
Clean Energy Council (Australia):
“Where traces of asbestos have been identified in the brake and clutch pad components of some internal service equipment, affected components have been isolated, and exclusion zones established where necessary, until testing is complete.
“Air quality testing has been conducted by independent hygienists across impacted sites and, to date, has confirmed no detection of airborne asbestos, beyond the detectable threshold, in any affected turbines and therefore zero risk of community exposure. The risk to maintenance workers has also been assessed as being either ‘very low’ or presenting ‘no quantifiable risk’ or exposure to personnel working in the wind turbines.”
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Thus far I’ve seen no reports on the brake pad issue outside of Australia, and the US bans imports of any such asbestos containing equipment.
Nerd note:
Asbestos refers to a fibrous magnesium mineral family, though other similarly fibrous minerals are sometimes called asbestos.
The “white asbestos” referred to here is chrysotile, a serpentine (curly) variant. While it is carcinogenic, the truly scary one is crocidolite (aka “blue asbestos”) which is stiffer and straighter and harder to clear out of lungs.
Be on the lookout for fossil-heads glomming onto this story, while conveniently forgetting all of the carcinogenic and lung-damaging combustion products (e.g., PM2.5) we have been inhaling for decades.
Sooooo many of the attacks on renewable energy are weaponized projection; things wrong with fossil and/or fissile fuels that their defenders are unwilling to admit or fully absorb, and so project them onto renewables and their defenders.
This may be unconscious, as most projection is, or it may be intentional preemptive attack, trying to blunt the effectiveness of legitimate criticism of F&FFs by turning it into an equal, cancelling out, he said/he said argument. By constantly coming up with new attacks, they raise the issue “first” (of course not first, as the knowledge of the horrific harm fuels do* has been public for more than a century, but first in short term memory on this topic) so any (fully justified) mote-and-beam rejoinder about those vastly more horrific effects can be portrayed as vindictive distractive avoidance or muddying the waters.
I think of this as projective trapping. And again, it’s projection on yet another level, as these are exactly the tactics far right denying delayalists, anti-renewable fanatics, and aunty-BEVists use. If they spent 1% of the brain power they spend on denial, delay and deception, on actually solving the crisis, the world would be powered by renewable energy and fed by low-meat perennials-based organic permaculture by now.
*killing 10 million people a year, causing hundreds of deadly and debilitating physical, emotional and cognitive conditions, eg.
‘Meh’ covers it!