The Pyrotechnic Tragedy of Sheffield's Hyperbolic Cooling Towers

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Over the weekend, an industrial-age legend was blown up — literally — in Sheffield, England. The Tinsley water cooling towers, two hourglass-shaped, 250-foot-tall structures, were built almost 70 years ago as part of a long-demolished power plant. Several local artists tried to convert the abandoned structures into art projects, but the lonely hulks were instead blown up by a company that is replacing them with a biomass power station. Thousands of people gathered to watch the towers blown up, and now you can see the tragic carnage too.

A spokesperson for E.ON, the company building the biomass power station to replace the Tinsley towers, told the UK Guardian:

One tower went down perfectly. The second only came down partially, a third [of it] was left standing - not exactly what we hoped for. There were rumours they hit the motorway. But when the dust cleared the Highways Agency said there was absolutely no debris on the [nearby M1] motorway. One of our teams chipped away at the concrete where it had become stuck and it finally came down at 5.30am.

Photos by Christopher Furlong/Getty.

Thousands Watch Fall of Tinsley Towers [UK Guardian]

A Coal-Burning Power Plant, Before and After

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Though the EU has been clamoring to reduce carbon emissions, Germany is in the process of building 26 new coal-burning power plants. Here you can see a gigantic excavator machine mining brown coal near the Boxberg power plant yesterday. Consider this a "before" picture. Want to see what happens after the excavation?

Yeah, it's something like this. Here you can see the Boxberg Power Plant, torching massive amounts of coal, chewing up the landscape, and shooting smoke into the atmosphere. Apparently these kinds of plants have been spun as a positive alternative to nuke power. I'd rather get electricity from nukes any day than power my computer with coal.

Images by Carsten Koall/Getty.

io9: mega industry

The Pyrotechnic Tragedy of Sheffield's Hyperbolic Cooling Towers

A Coal-Burning Power Plant, Before and After