Bucket-Wheel Excavators: The Most Destructive Machines on the Planet?
The scale of the Rhineland lignite operations is such that entire communities have been razed and their occupants relocated to new villages, to make way for the dirty excavation of a dirty fuel.
After the land has been mined, reclamation efforts have fallen short of repairing local ecological services provided by wetlands and forests.
An estimated 30,000 people have been relocated by lignite operations in the Rhineland. Fifty-eight villages have vanished thanks to mining activities in the region, including some that date back to the Roman Period.
The latest to give way to the encroaching mining operations is the village of Otzenrath. Current plans are to work the fields for another 25 years, and if that is the case, more villages will be slated for demolition, erasing thousands of years of history and culture from the map. Continued…
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March 4th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Those giant machines are awesome! I have one on my Christmas list for this year. I love big machines.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Consider who you’re writing for. Common people.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Tim,
What’s your solution and who will pay for it?
March 4th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Khurt-
There is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot. Although brown coal may be “cheap” now, when you factor in the “externalities” of its production, it no longer seems like such a good deal.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
That term, externalities, makes me see red. It’s not external to anyone except the economists and corporate execs in their cushy offices. The rest of us live out in that real world which is “external” to them.
If the future wasn’t subsidizing most of the price of coal (and oil, and nuclear) we’d have switched to clean and sustainable energy decades ago.
Great post.
(And while I have my language police hat on . . . razed. NOT raised. Eep.)
March 4th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
quixote- Yes, Eep indeed. Thanks.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
[...] Dirtiest Tech on the Planet?: Looking for a clear cut definition of what’s clean technology, and what’s not? Here’s a definite “not”: The bucket-wheel excavator, which leaves a trail of destroyed villages, bad soil and salty water as it scours western Germany’s lignite fields. — CleanTechnica [...]
March 4th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
quixote,
There is nothing wrong with the term. Externalities are external to the transaction taking place, in this case the purchase of coal for a price that covers the cost of extraction plus a margin for the producer. (This means that the transaction may happen even if it is value destructive for society as a whole.)
The solution for externalities in economic theory is to “internalize” them, which means making the corporate execs in their crusty offices pay for the damage they do. I hope we can agree that this is a good thing, and that we can let the economists off the hook?
March 4th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
I always liked Germany and what they do for renewables and energy efficiency. But getting half of their electricity with coal and those ugly huge machines… no, no and no !
France chose nuclear. It has problems, but to choose between that and coal I would choose nuclear because of its low emissions.
No energy solution is perfect… however your blog is ! Keep it up !
March 4th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I am torn on this one – the machine is incredibly destructive … but on the other hand, it is INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE.
Cool. Evil and wrong, of course, but cool.
March 5th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Jo- I know, right? If this thing were featured on one of those TLC or Discovery programs I would definitely watch it.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:48 am
@ Timothy – This machine was on TV at one time. The show featured the machine moving from town to town eventually making it to the mine. The picture you posted of it rolling over the road was depicted in the episode. Quite a logistics feat…
But if this thing isn’t a dinosaur I don’t know what is.
So now we have come full circle, dinosaurs digging up dinosaurs…
We must do better than this or we are all doomed, and soon!
March 5th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Here you go… a sample video.
I imagine you can purchase the whole show on Discovery.com
Just hope the Chinese aren’t using these yet to fuel the coal plants being built every two weeks.
Now that’s destruction!
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/35749-mega-excavators-bucket-wheel-excavators-video.htm
March 5th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Hello there,
first of all I agree with Jo;) Of course a bucket wheel excavator is destructive, and of course coal mining is not the cleanest way of getting energy.. But sorry to say Edouard: Nuclear waste is a little more destructive than this excavator!!! I have been in the Rhineland and inspected a bulldozer which was regenerating the destroyed ground to build a bio-parc.. Nature will be rebuilt within few years and even nicer than before.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
@ Machine Fan: Such a small world view you have. So they can fill in a big hole with dirt and plant trees on top. That makes everyone feel good, but what about the product of all the energy waste? Unfortunately the nature you are going to rebuild will be subject to huge increases of CO2 levels and other untold catastrophes.
Nuclear is no better… just shifting the problems somewhere else.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
chrisp – thanks, I’ll be watching that later!
Yeah, that second pic is totally from when they moved from one town to another. I also know that the biggest BWE is actually in use in Australia, but wasn’t able to find any pics (yet).
March 5th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I’m living in just that region of western Germany, where we are surrounded of open-pit mining sites (is that the right term?).
For us, the view of big holes, inhabited by those big excavators, and with the steam of cooling towers of the cole power stations around is just like normal. Kind of sad…
The latest and most controversial project in cole mining business is at the site of Hambach. It’s the biggest open-pit mining site of Germany. You can even see it by satellite (without needing to zoom too much). The »crazy« thing: They are currently planning, what they do with the hole after it’s been completely mined. Most probably (I think it’s already finally said, but I’m not that sure) they will fill the whole thing with water. It will be the second biggest German lake (right after the Bodensee) with 3.6 Mrd m^3 water. The filling of the hole will take several decades.
The (German) article in the wikipedia translated into English is here.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Thanks for your insight, Andi.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Well it seems that a seperate dedicated power plant is needed for this giant. BTW i must say this is a amazing structure.