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Redcar - Still Glowing.
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Unusual, unique I suspect, view of the remains of a blast furnace, Redcar in this instance.
When the blast furnace was shut down for good, they didn't have a salamander tap hole to drain off the remaining liquid iron and this is the colossal solidified lump of iron that still stands after everything else has been cleared.
The job of removing it appears to be a very complex operation due to it sheer mass and will involve various stages of first, shaped copper coned explosives to create a series of holes, followed by liquid explosive that will penetrate all the nooks and crannies of the iron. The result should be a series of shockwaves that hit each other and create tensile forces that pull the iron apart. Much like quarrying, the shockwave should shatter the iron in to small pieces.
There might well be a very large exclusion zone!
The remains themselves are stunning and very sculptural with the removal of the refractory lining and carbon blocks to expose the iron which positively glows where it has rusted, as if still hot. The photo also doesn't do the magnitude of the remains justice, they are huge.
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