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They Shoot Cooling Towers, Don’t They?

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This appears on the MSNBC site in their 10 Years of The Week in Pictures slideshow – this is slide 17 (the pictures are much worth going through, as is the archive. Lots of really good photos.)2002_RTREEXH.ss_full

Here’s the caption:

2002: Rainbow frames German nuclear plant

Agriculture and industry meet in a surreal scene beneath a rainbow near the power plant at Grosskrotzenburg, Germany, on Nov. 25.

Hmmm! Grosskrotzenburg? Nuclear plant? Who knew! So we looked it up and found this, a closer view of the plant. And, um, it’s a coal-fired plant. There was a nuclear plant in nearby Kahl but it’s been closed since 1985.

We did find this tidbit about the cooling towers seen in the picture:

At some modern power stations, equipped with flue gas purification like the Power Station Staudinger Grosskrotzenburg and the Power Station Rostock, the cooling tower is also used as a flue gas stack (industrial chimney). At plants without flue gas purification, this causes problems with corrosion.

Anyhow, small error. We sent a note to MSNBC to have them check this, so it may get a caption change soon. Maybe our coal friends might like to link to it (and with the raking over the, can’t avoid it, coals they’ve been getting lately, they could use a pretty picture or two).

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Comments

crf said…
People associate hyperboloid-shaped towers with nuclear.
August 28, 2009 at 12:52 PM
Atomikrabbit said…
Typical MSNBC fact-checking. How long did it take NEI to find that out, 30 seconds? I've pulled the plug on "mainstream" news media.
August 28, 2009 at 1:50 PM
DocForesight said…
I'd suggest to Keith Olbermann to name PMSNBC as the "Worst News Organization in the Wooorld"! Oops, he "works" for them. Never mind.
August 28, 2009 at 6:50 PM
Alex Brown said…
it took me about 2 seconds of looking at the picture to know it was a coal plant, i was actually going to post that NEI had screwed up posting this picture, but then i see that it was actually the NEI correcting someone else.

This is an error I see ALOT, its pretty simply really, look at the dang smokestacks in the background. There are FAR more coal plant in the world with hyperboloid cooling towers than there are nuke plants with them. its jsut another TMI thing that people relate the two.
August 28, 2009 at 7:42 PM
GRLCowan said…
A burg that's full of gross krotzen sounds like a good place for a coal plant, depending of course on what krotzen are.

(How fire can be domesticated)
August 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM
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