The Mystery of the Missing Half-a-Power-Plant

27Jan10

(posted by stuartgrant)

Here’s a bit of a photographic suspense-mystery-thriller-romantic comedy* for you.

This is a typical view from our apartment balcony (in summer):

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Here’s the part of the picture I want to draw your attention to. Our gorgeous disused power plant:

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Here’s what it looks like at the moment… notice anything missing?

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Well, of course, I assured Elly that power plant cooling towers don’t just go missing! So of course it had to be a result of the 10cm snowfall we had the night before, combined with sub-zero temperatures, combined with a slight wind blowing against the side of the cooling tower we could see from our apartment. Completely plausible!

But since it was a sunny Sunday and a balmy minus 4 degrees, we decided to go for a walk to investigate. Did you know that it can be quite sunny, yet remain below zero? I didn’t.

Here’s what we saw last time we walked there (with Humf):

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And here’s what we saw on this occasion:

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But we weren’t quite sure, so we went a bit closer this time:

They knocked down HOW many tonnes on concreteness??

We can only assume they were able to dismantle and sell it. Check your local Trading Post this week for a bargain cooling tower:

Dale: Dad, someone’s selling a Nuclear Cooling Tower.

Dad: How much are they askin’?

Dale: Mill’yun Leva.

Dad: Tell ‘em they’re dreaming!

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* = I promised to throw in some romantic comedy, so it’s just as well I can wish Elly a

Happy 4th Wedding Anniversary today! Hi Elly. You’re nice. I kinda like you.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 9:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

13 comments so far for “The Mystery of the Missing Half-a-Power-Plant”

Humphrey says on

28Jan 2010 at 12:25 am :


“Oh where or where did my tower go? The good Lord took her away from me… She’s gone to Moscow where she’s going to be, part of a nuuuu–uuu–uuuccc-cleeee-ar BOOM.”

I’ve got a theory… Until recently, Bulgaria had the worlds most potentially unsafe nuclear power plant. Bulgaria really liked (and still do) this power plant because it meant the country was able to sell much power overseas (mmm… that term only works in Aus hey?…), I mean internationally.

Closing this powerplant down was a condition of them becoming part of the EU. However, the Bulgarians want to start it up again.

My theory is that you have just started unravelling the thread of a secret Bulgarian plan to restart this powerplant – and the first step was to get an extra cooling tower in-case something goes wrong :-P Hopefully you will all be out of the country by the time it goes live – I mean boom! :-P

Oh, and contrary to my blog and facebook updates, I have decided that this power-plant was going to be coal, not nuclear. Why else would it have a heaps high smoke stack, since nuclear doesn’t release anything into the atmosphere. I bused past a PP in Turkey that had no smoke stacks…

But, let’s keep calling it nuclear, cause that sounds dodgier… although, coal smoke that close to a city couldn’t be very good either :-P

Imo says on

28Jan 2010 at 2:13 am :


Heh heh heh. Definitely spies. They do this kind of thing on Spooks all the time. Or it could be magpies.

Imo says on

28Jan 2010 at 2:14 am :


Ooooh, and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY. :D

Thomas says on

28Jan 2010 at 6:38 am :


Wow, how quickly did they get rid of it?! You didn’t even see it half-demolished or whatever. Good writing Stu, and happy anniversary to both of you! :D

Kylie says on

28Jan 2010 at 6:55 am :


i only read it for the romantic comedy :P
nah the whole things hilarious esp. your explanation to Elly of why she couldn’t see it :P

SallyLouise says on

28Jan 2010 at 11:16 am :


Toddlers did it.

Amelia says on

28Jan 2010 at 12:40 pm :


omg four years!!
i still remember your wedding :P gratz guys
it looks better without it anyway, but thats weird they’d just knock it down…mystery, write a book
xx

stuartgrant says on

29Jan 2010 at 4:21 pm :


Thanks everyone. We had a nice anniversary. Special thanks to Val who was the first to congratulate us (see the previous post). And she didn’t even need to be told! Neither did you though, Sal.

#Humfly – if you don’t hear from us, or if our blog is mysteriously down in the near future, I think you’re Spooksesque theory will have been proven right.

[Irrelevant aside - notice how I use the passive-future-past tense in that last sentence? These Turkish lesson have made me a lot more aware of the manner in which I speak/write English!]

#Kylieeeee – yeah, it was a logical, yet completely stupid explanation. You can clearly see sky behind where my ’snow-blown onto the cooling tower’ is supposed to be in the photo!

#Mr. Thomness – based purely on the photograph dates, it happened sometime between Dec 12th and Jan 24th! In other words, we have no idea. Probably happened while we were in Romania, and we managed not to see it between our return (Jan 5th) and that big snow (Jan 22nd)! Not very conclusive, eh?

Hey someone should heckle Elly for her blog-writing absence! But don’t tell her I told you to say it! Shhh.

Cheers
Stu.

mum grant says on

31Jan 2010 at 4:33 am :


happy anniversary you two – I remember that hot day well – it was loverly!!

keep away from that site! hope you’re having your radiation tabs!

love you!
mum

ps any news on your birthday week travel plans?

Carla says on

31Jan 2010 at 9:09 am :


Haven’t read your blog for a while ’cause we’ve been holidaying but wanted to say what a great entry that was! It put a smile on my face at the end of a long day packing (to move house). Thanks.
PS Can’t believe it’s only 10 weeks to go! That seems to have gone really fast.

Cooling Tower Manufacturers, says on

09Feb 2010 at 2:31 pm :


SONA COOLING TOWERS is into manufacturing of FRP Cooling Towers. Since the inception, we constantly provide new solutions and applications in recalculating cooling tower systems to meet the requirement of rapidly advancing technology. SONA COOLING TOWERS highest quality products have been designed to provide unique solution with significant saving in energy consumption and cost associated with downtime for schedule maintenance.

ellygrant says on

09Feb 2010 at 4:13 pm :


[We don't usually encourage spam, but this one made us laugh. Maybe we should ask them if they've heard anything on the cooling tower grapevine about our missing icon?]

Humphrey says on

10Feb 2010 at 12:39 am :


haha.. that spam is awesome