이 풍력시설은 시속 150m의 강풍에도 견딜 수 있도록 설계되어 있으나 겨우 50m의 돌풍에 쓰러져 버렸다.
조사결과 제작사의 잘못으로 밝혀졌으며 기초시공 부실로 드러났다.
환경운동가들은 앞으로도 이러한 일들이 늘어날 것으로 보고 있다.
주택 주변에 세워진 다른 풍력발전시설들도 안전한 지 불안하기만 하다.
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The scandal of UK's death-trap wind turbines: A turbine built for 115mph winds felled in 50mph gusts. Dozens more affected by cost-cutting. Why residents living in their shadow demand to know - are they safe?
Health and Safety Executive release reports on collapsed wind turbines Causes were manufacturing faults and basic installation mistakes Campaigners believe the risk of turbines collapsing will continue to grow
By Simon Trump for The Mail on Sunday It was just before midnight on a winter’s night last year. Outside in the gusting January wind it was freezing, but Bill Jarvis was sitting by the fire with his wife Annie and a few relatives in their cottage on the North Devon moors. And that’s when they heard it: a tremendous ‘crack’, louder than a thunderclap.
‘We rushed outside wondering what on earth had happened,’ recalls Bill. ‘We thought perhaps a plane had crashed it was such a loud noise. ‘We couldn’t see flames or anything burning, even though we peered out in the direction it had come from. There was nothing else though, no more noise or aftershocks.’
Collapsed: The turbine that fell at East Ash Farm, Bradworthy had been installed with the wrong configuration of nuts at its base, upsetting its balance
Deafeningly loud it might have been, but what the Jarvis family had heard – as they were to discover the following morning – had taken place at Bradworthy, a mile away. It was the noise of a 115ft-high wind turbine crashing to the ground.
‘It’s pretty terrifying stuff,’ says Mr Jarvis. ‘I’m no fan of the things and this has just added to my worries. Just think what could have happened. It sends a shiver down your spine.’
He is not the only one feeling nervous about the march of the giant metal windmills across the British landscape. This week, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) produced two reports – one into the catastrophic failure of the Bradworthy turbine and another into the collapse of a turbine in the next county, Cornwall, just three nights later. And its conclusions are not merely unsettling, but have frightening implications for wind turbines and their safety right across the country.
Man down: The wind turbine at Winsdon Farm, North Petherwin, Cornwall, fell due to a fault with the components, resulting in a failure in the foundation rods concreted into its base
The turbines in Devon and Cornwall came down when the wind was blowing at barely 50mph, despite the fact that they are supposed to withstand blasts of just over 115mph.
And, as the HSE concluded, the causes were manufacturing faults and basic mistakes in the way they were installed. The errors have already been replicated elsewhere in the country, as the two reports make clear, and could affect dozens – if not hundreds – more of the giant towers.
It is hardly encouraging to learn that the HSE reports were not published in a normal sense, but were available only on request and in redacted form.
They have come to light now only through Freedom of Information (FoI) requests lodged by a number of concerned residents.
Dr Philip Bratby, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, believes the risk of collapse will continue to grow as long as the wind industry is allowed to operate behind a wall of secrecy.
A retired physicist, who formerly worked in nuclear energy, he says: ‘Safety standards in my line of work were paramount. We constantly monitored, tested and maintained equipment but this does not seem the case with turbines. ‘These two failures were catastrophic. The towers came crashing down with great force from a great height. ‘It was only down to luck it happened in the night and no people or animals were injured or killed.
‘The wind industry is very secretive about everything it does. It won’t publicise any definitive information about accidents so it is impossible to make an independent assessment of the risks.’
Dr Bratby lives at Rackenford, high on the edge of Exmoor, where there has also been a proliferation of turbines. ‘I am not convinced that we are learning from the bad experiences and feeding those lessons back into the education of designers and constructors because the industry is growing so rapidly,’ he says.
‘The size of these turbines seems to keep on increasing and I believe the dangers will increase accordingly. The bigger the turbine that fails, the bigger the potential for disaster and death.’
Turbine towers are supposedly secured by lowering them on to a series of foundation rods that emerge vertically from a concrete foundation.
These are levelled by the adjustment of bottom nuts below a flange at the base and then fixed with another set of nuts above the base.
Campaigners believe the risk of turbines collapsing will continue to grow as long as the wind industry is allowed to operate behind a wall of secrecy
