The Indirect Risk of Wind Turbines to Seveso Establishments

Currently, climate change and renewable energy are hot topics. Therefore, wind turbines are rapidly increasing in number. However, the government, the wind turbine sector and the safety experts must ask the question “Is it safe to install a wind turbine? Is it acceptable to do so at a certain location?”, especially near Seveso establishments, which contain many dangerous substances. What if the wind turbine fails? What if a wind turbine blade is thrown away? What if the wind turbine tower or the nacelle fails? What happens then to the surrounding Seveso establishments, and the installations with dangerous substances? And what happens to the people in the vicinity? In other words, what is the risk posed by the wind turbine to its surroundings? These are questions that need to be answered before the government can grant the wind turbine permit. In Flanders, guidelines to calculate and assess the risk of wind turbines are published in collaboration with the wind turbine manufacturers and the Flemish certified experts in the context of the Seveso Directive (OMG, 2019b). A distinction is made between the direct and the indirect risk posed by the wind turbine. For the direct risk, the method of The Netherlands (DNV GL, 2014) was mainly followed, with a few adjustments. For the indirect risk, the government of Flanders developed a method in collaboration with the Flemish experts, as The Netherlands or any other country do not have an elaborated method for this. The latter is the focus point for this article.