The sun rises over an image of Earth, with trees, windmills and birds on the horizon.
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No.

Wind turbine collapses or blade failures are extremely uncommon, and wind power causes far fewer deaths per unit of electricity than fossil fuels.

Modern utility-scale turbines use monitoring and shutdown systems designed to handle extreme weather, including hurricanes. Concerns about blades breaking off were more common in earlier years of wind development, but improved engineering and hazard sensors have made these events exceedingly infrequent. One study estimated the turbine blade failure rate at about 0.54% per year, with the U.S. Department of Energy describing “catastrophic” failures as rare events.

Safety comparisons utilize “deaths per terawatt-hour,” which counts both direct accidents (like mining, drilling, transport and plant accidents) and indirect deaths from air pollution or emissions. By this measure, wind is estimated to cause about 0.04 deaths/TWh, far below coal (24-33 deaths), oil (18), or natural gas (3).

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Sources

References:

Philosophical Transactions Damage tolerance and structural monitoring for wind turbine blades
US Department of Energy How Do Wind Turbines Survive Severe Weather and Storms?
US Department of Energy Wind Energy Projects and Safety
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering A Critical Review of Damage and Failure of Composite Wind Turbine Blade Structures
US Department of Energy Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States
Our World in Data What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?

Type of Story: Fact-Check

Checks a specific statement or set of statements asserted as fact.