I’ve seen cites for the speed of the tips around 180 mph at top speed, nowhere near the speed of sound.
No.
I kind of covered this earlier, but autocorrect messed things up. You can bake composite parts at high temperature to burn off the resin. This leaves just the fibers, but it’s pretty energy intensive. Right now, shredding is the best option, just as you suggest.
Right. Also, there just aren’t enough of them and they’re too spread out to develop re-use infrastructure.
Are airplane wings made similarly? How are those disposed of and how often do they need replaced?
I should note that AIUI most blades aren’t wearing out; they’re being landfilled after decommissioning.
No idea re: the above airplane question. I’m assuming aluminum, with some movement to carbon fiber composite.
Stress causes strain. Strain causes weakness and failure.
Composites do not generally recycle well.
I visualize big windfarms I’ve seen in California foothills and passes. Am I wrong to expect them to discard many fairly similar blades? Could those blades fit as structural pieces in not-too-distant low-cost housing? I imagine blades bolted together, wrapped with chicken wire / hardware cloth, and squirted full of concrete for fireproof panels. Is this feasible?
That’s not true. Fatigue can cause failure, but not all strain causes fatigue. What’s more, not all fatigue leads to failure.
Ok; yeah, that’s pretty much true as stated. 
That depends on where one took statics and mechanics of materials.
I strongly suspect we are drawing lines in different places. I tend not to think about such things as the entropy driven reversible strain in rubber bands, and more about irreversible strains in wood and metal. You are correct in pointing out that not all strain is irreversible, but I expect reversibility is limited in stiff structures such as windmiil blades. Bend too far, and you will get damage.
Many tasks are technically feasible but not economically so. I’m not equipped to run an actual technoeconomic analysis here. But there are only some 60k turbines in the US. If those are evenly spaced temporally (they aren’t), and if they last 20 years (many are older), then we’re only taking down ~3k per year. Spread out over multiple states.
The biggest wind farm I know of in the US (Alta, in Tehachapi, CA) only has like 200 turbines. They didn’t go up all at once. And they won’t come down all at once. I think they put up five the first year.
And then there’s the question about whether the material is even safe and suitable for housing, which I don’t know.
Expanding on this, ~9k blades at, say, 8 tons each, is a piddling 70 thousand tons per year into landfills.
Remember “green” didn’t necessarily mean devoid of all impact.
According to Wiki, you’re off by a factor of 17:
There’s also a “wind farm” in Altamount Pass CA with close to 5000 turbines.
You’re describing a use that gives a very low value to used blades - probably a lot lower than the cost of transporting them.
So I am. It’s still not much material to work with.
Yes that’s what I have found out also. Also add wind power scales up nicely with size so still serviceable older wind plants which are smaller, are more economical to scrap and replace with larger turbines then continue the maintenance on.
Well yes and no. It does blow more steady but only till you are a ‘few hundred feet’ above ground, otherwise nights are quite still. Considering the largest of wind turbines are centered about 200 ft up and the wing can reach just over 300 feet, much of the wind turbine actually sits at night in the still air zone. This should be different if the turbine is on a hilltop.
Cites:
‘(and to a foreseeable future)’, something so controversial somehow slipped in as fact
Yes right now we are mainly using fossil fuels in place of energy storage, and that means plant redundancy or needing both types of plants including full capacity fossil fuel plants. So no savings in plant construction. Or is there?
Normally when one think of this they say we still need the total fossil fuel capacity, but they fail to realise the savings from not having to build up excess renewable plants. By having some of our renewables covered by fossil fuels that means we don’t have to build renewable plants and energy storage solutions. Don’t get me wrong renewables are great and compete nicely or even cheaper than fossil fuel plants. But only to a point, once one has to build to first: produce excess power and second: storage solutions for that power renewables are in general not cost effective compared to burning fossils to fill in the gaps (though pumped hydro is cost effective). Though new solutions for these short comings are being researched and can be expected.
So yes we are leaning on fossils for now and still need them, but that is a transition, after which we can start reducing the fossil fuel plants in the future.
That seems like the real issue. The NPR article says 720,000 tons over the next 20 years. So, spread evenly, that would be 36,000 tons annually (I know it won’t actually work like that). New York City produces 8,000,000 tons of trash annually. It’s not as though we’re going to be neck-deep in old turbine blades.
However, they’re inconveniently sized and located, making them a hassle to move around and put somewhere. If they were all in one space it might be feasible to recycle, refurbish or reuse them but they’re not.
Seems like if you had 7 or 8 of the big ones. you could figure out how to build a house out of them.
It’d be funky looking, but no more so than the semi-trailer or Coke bottle houses.
No one would confuse it for a UFO house or a Buckminster Fuller dome house.
If you want your house to bend in the wind, sure.