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Submitted on behalf of user "crutchy" #179, who writes:
"I don't seem to be able to use the 'Submit Story' feature at the moment... I just thought I'd flag a little saga currently unfolding near where I live. An open cut coal mine that supplies coal to a nearby 1600MW power station in Victoria, Australia, has been on fire for over a week. This could threaten electricity generation in the area and might have been deliberately set.
What might be more interesting is the lack of news media attention to it."
[Ed. Note] we're working on fixing article submission, thanks for getting this to us via alternate means.
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(Score: 1) by crutchy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:14PM
the fact that it is threatening a power station might be... a lot of tech doesn't work well without them :-P
there is some interesting tech being used from what i hear. it's unfortunate that the media hasn't reported on it, but there aren't hundreds of firefighters lined up with conventional hoses trying to put this thing out. from what i hear there are some fairly specialized high volume firefighting appliances being used. i haven't seen any pics, so unfortunately this is just third-hand info. you don't put a coal fire out by hammering it with a water jet because it kinda acts like oil in some ways (it just spreads). i would think that's whatever the equipment actually is looks like, the water being pumped onto the fire is probably low pressure but high volume; so very large pipes with water flowing over the batters from the top maybe.
the aspect that i originally thought might be interesting to soylent readers was the apparent media/corporate cover up (the mine and power station is owned by GDF Suez). it's something that is talked about a lot around here (in my engineering circle) anyway.