Strip mine near Centralia

We made our annual trip to Knoebels today and of course had to go down the road to see Centralia again. It's becoming quite a tourist attraction at least on the weekends. I noticed a good size strip mine along 61 between Mount Carmel and Centralia. Anyone know who's working that? It looks like they've invested in some nice equipment. Maybe they'll be their long term.

Blaschak. A year or two ago you could see how they uncovered a whole vein of coal before they harvested it. There was a mountain, they moved it. Left the coal vein. Ran a drag line up it and trucked the coal away. Right across the street from Harmony

I've wanted to go to Centralia for a while now. It's the US's version of Chernobyl. Only the fire is spreading underground and not contained in a giant concrete dome.

I have never understood how coal can burn underground. Where/how does it get air? I thought anthracite had to have lots of air to burn.

I'm On Fire wrote:I've wanted to go to Centralia for a while now. It's the US's version of Chernobyl. Only the fire is spreading underground and not contained in a giant concrete dome.

Sorry for off subject,
but Chernobyl is/was in a tin building, no dome and no concrete.

I'm pretty sure the Chernobyl unit that melted down got covered with concrete afterwards.

Mike

Helo pilots and crews were 'volunteers' and if you hadn't heard, are no longer with us. All infrastrcture and buildings sit empty........All the aircraft and construction equipment used sit on a pad near the plant...too radioactive to even touch.
Leukemia got most of them, but they are the real heros....and we must thank the stupid engineers who ignored the common sense alarms for ruining a reactor that was working fairly safely. Looks like that little event didn't follow to Japan where human interaction once again wasn't a good solution. If it look like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, by GAWD IT IS A DUCK!!!

Note: NO PEX internal coils with 60 psi. 200 degrees at 30 psi is sketchy enough. QUACK QUACK!!!!

but still true.

We have a 4 billion dollar mars rover crusing around ......think we might be able to get er done in Centralia? I know, it costs a GREAT deal of money, and like most common things we do: I AIN'T SEXY, so it takes its place faaaarrrrr back and deep on the bucket list.

Yeah, many many things today either make absolutely no sense, or are totally backwards from what they used to be ...

The built a big concrete building over the damaged reactor. Chernobyl was cause by a test, they were trying to use steam pressure from the boiler to turn cooling water pumps for the core. They had tryed the test before and had problems.

McGiever wrote:

I'm On Fire wrote:I've wanted to go to Centralia for a while now. It's the US's version of Chernobyl. Only the fire is spreading underground and not contained in a giant concrete dome.

Sorry for off subject,
but Chernobyl is/was in a tin building, no dome and no concrete.

Pacowy wrote:I'm pretty sure the Chernobyl unit that melted down got covered with concrete afterwards.

Mike

I read an article in NG a few years ago on Chernobyl. From what I remember the first-responders dumped thousands of tons of clay, lead, concrete, etc from helicopters to try and contain the radiation. They had to pump out a huge amount of water from the floors beneath the reactor because they feared a steam explosion. A steer/concrete structure was hastily built to try and contain the radiation, it is now in very bad shape and there is an ongoing product to build a much more permanate structure over the existing "sarcophagus". Nearly all the people that worked in the initial containment effort died of radiation poisoning.

Here's an interesting read on Centralia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

If you go to Google Earth you can actually look at what the town looks like today, most of the photos are from 2007/08.

Even more recent is the History Channel "Life Without People: Death of a Town" on Centralia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDGPpJ79k2A