[Closed] It's only a chemical plant, nothing to see here

Yeah saw those on the train home last night - had hoped it was Divine intervention on Falkirk! - Oh well another mystery debunked by actual science.

Yeah,it's just water vapour.
Nothing nasty in those clouds ,no sirree bob.

Meanwhile a cumulus cloud at sunset

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Whatever humans can do, nature can do better!

'Binners overdoses on Gregg's sausage and bean bake with disastrous consequences'

I spotted those as I was heading home on the bus last night. At first I thought it was a whopper of a thundercloud forming, but then common sense reigned me in as they were obviously drifiting away from the Grangemouth cooling towers.

They were pretty funky though!

C.

It's only water vapour, it's all fine, return to your homes

[img] https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSUF9wbOOAosjlVymg2DOy2COLQis5ufAP2-c3poItBCPFKKDnTpA [/img]

I drove past them about half three when they were still "connected" to the towers at grangemouth and mossmorran, was a very striking sight and shows just how much spews out of those places when there's no wind to make it go anywhere. Mostly water vapour that you can see but certainly wouldn't want a lungful given the smell the place emits.

shows just how much spews out of those places when there's no wind to make it go anywhere.

What you can emit from a chemical plant is really strictly controlled. All your release points are known to SEPA and monitored, with limits on what you can release . You even have to account from every tonne going through the place, just so stuff isn't "lost" to the environment. I'd be a lot more worried by pollution from living beside a main road than Grangemounth.

Tell me about it. I used to work for a company that had chemical plant on the west coast of scotland, that used seaweed to make alginates. Because different types of seaweeds have different types of alginic acids in them, as well as using indigenous types we also used to import qtys from Peru, Iceland and NZ, which were harvested in those locations, air dried, baled, and then shipped (to prolong shelf life and reduce costs of shipping water)

Once received it was then rehydrated with sea water (not in short supply) before being drained and passed on to the next stage in the process.

The man from the SEPA forced us to spend millions on a pipeline that went nearly a mile out to see to pump out the effluent. Which was - seawater contaminated by particles of seaweed. Top job, fella!

The water at our plant was cleaner going out than it was coming in.

A really incongruous camera/security system at the outfall which was in a nature conservation area (plant pre-dated the nature area).

Frogs used to shag madly in the lagoon (emergency bund for any spill on site) and make cycling to the security hut worse than cycling on ice..

On the release thing - Longannet and other coal stations would/will be spewing out the kind of quantities of radioactive isotopes that would get a nuclear station shut down for good. But all nuclear problems must come from the nuclear industry? Right?