£310m invested in british wind turbines

Manufacturing giant Siemens and the UK's Associated British Ports are to invest a total of £310m in UK wind turbine factories, creating 1,000 jobs.Siemens will put up £160m - doubling its previous plans to invest £80m in wind turbine production in the UK.

The investment is being made across two locations - the Green Port project in Hull, and a second manufacturing facility in Paull in East Yorkshire.

Siemens said the UK "recognises the potential of offshore wind energy".    

"We invest in markets with reliable conditions that can ensure that factories       can work to capacity," said Michael Suess,head of Siemens's energy sector.  

The combined investment of £310m is expected to create up to 1,000 jobs directly - 300 more than previously announced - plus additional jobs in construction and through the supply chain.

The Green Port facility will construct, assemble and service offshore wind turbines, while the second Siemens site in Paull will be used to manufacture the 75-metre rotor blades.

Great walls of America

Building three "Great Walls" across Tornado Alley in the US could eliminate the disasters, a physicist says.The barriers - 300m (980ft) high and up to 100 miles long - would act like hill ranges, softening winds before twisters can form.They would cost $16bn (£9.6bn) to build but save billions of dollars of damage each year, said Prof Rongjia Tao, of Temple University, Philadelphia.

He unveiled his idea at the American Physical Society meeting in Denver.

However critics say the idea is unworkable, and would create more problems than it solves.
Threat over 'forever'Every year hundreds of twisters tear through communities in the great north-south corridor between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountain ranges.


The proposed walls would not shelter towns - they would not be strong enough to block a tornado in motion.Instead, they would soften the clashing streams of hot southern and cold northern air, which form twisters in the first place, Prof Tao said."If we build three east-west great walls, one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma, and the third in the south in Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the threats in Tornado Alley forever," he said.