The Pentagon — which has been warm to things nuclear including, most recently small reactors as part of its move away from fossil fuels and toward energy self-sufficiency — has emerged as the latest impediment to expansion of wind generation according to the New York Times. 

The Times reports in today’s paper (Wind Turbine Projects Run Into Resistance) that "moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes disappear from radar entirely. Clusters of wind turbines, which can reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give accurate weather information to pilots."

And while there hasn’t been a documented result to date of this cause and effect, the House Armed Services Committee has been told that — in certain arenas, such as in the proximity of air bases — wind turbines are "an unacceptable risk to training, testing and national security," according to the Times’ narrative.

In 2009, it is alleged that "9,000 megawatts of wind power projects were abandoned or delayed because of radar concerns raised by the military and the Federal Aviation Administration" — more than the aggregate domestic deployment of wind in the same year. 

The Pentagon — which is already heavily engaged in several conflicts (such as Afghanistan and Iraq) — is now also pitted "in direct conflict" with the Department of Energy’s stimulus injected multi-billion dollar checkbook for wind power.  This comes at a time when the DOE is itself fighting another "menace" — bureaucracy; a couple weeks ago the department’s inspector general reported that less than 10 percent of one of DOE’s key renewables portfolios has been expended since the February, 2009, stimulus recovery act.

An Idaho National Laboratory researcher calls the Pentagon-DOE stand-off "the train wreck of the 2000s" spelled-out as "competing resources for two national needs: energy security and national security." It is not clear whether 2000s means the decade of the 2000s or the 21st Century…

Read more at the New York Times

Tags: DOE, Idaho National Laboratory, New York Times, Nuclear Townhall, The Pentagon, wind turbine

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