A CORRESPONDENT recently asked what produces the vast sulphurous plume stretching across the western skyline, light yellow to the naked eye and deep brown when viewed through sunglasses.

A CORRESPONDENT recently asked what produces the vast sulphurous plume stretching across the western skyline, light yellow to the naked eye and deep brown when viewed through sunglasses. A quick check on the map shows it to be Abertaw B Power Station, located on the Welsh coast a few miles beyond Barry Island.

This old coal-fired power station used to burn coal from the open cast mine at Merthyr Tydfil and its three AEI 500MW steam turbines could produce a total of 1455MW. It was due for closure, but in June 2005 nPower agreed to install Flue Gas Desulfurization equipment to meet the new European environmental regulations. Construction of the equipment started in June 2006 and uprated 520MW steam turbines were fitted during 2007 and 2008.

The power station now burns a mix of fossil fuels including woodchips, stuff that we would not be allowed to burn at home, but by the modern miracle of technopolitical terminological inexactitude the whole process is completely green and the yellow-brown slick across the skyline is entirely fictitious, a product of our own fevered imaginations, an afterglow of the bad old past and does not exist in our new socio-politically greened future.

MIKE ROGERS

Baker Street

Weston