Tram Town
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
| Category: We went down to PowerWorks in Morwell today. As with most tours of industrial operations in rural areas (well, at least PowerWorks and the Portland aluminium smelter), the concentration is on all of the environmental good they do. This mob even claim to be achieving wonders in the greenhouse caper. Now as you all know, I am a Global Warming Sceptic™, but if we are to believe all of the assertions about Global Warming™, a coal-fired power station is no friend of The Green Religion™. Regardless, the Hazelwood open-cut mine is a magnificent hole and it is quite humbling to stand on the edge of it and contemplate that what used to fill it was turned into electricity. I also love being in the generator room. It feels like the warehouse scene from the first Indiana Jones movie. The turbine/generator pairs seem to go on forever, each capable of pumping out 200MW. Shame about the rain. We had a bit of dampness on the way down there and then on the way back there were times when I just had to pull off the road because it felt so dangerous. The Bureau's observations pages don't seem to think there was much noteworthy in the precipitation caper at all. I know different. The tour itself was just a bit long and it was very difficult to see the monstrous dredges at work because of the rain. 7.5/10.0 Well worth the trip on a dry cool day (apparently the generator and furnace rooms get a bit hot on warmer days). |
