It looks like a volcano in the ash lake on the edge of a hole in the ground 300 meters deep. It is the heart of the local economy, without which the population would die out faster than during the worst epidemic. Around the power plant there are hundreds of boards prohibiting approaching the object and even more so taking photos.

The power plant is able to produce 4320 MW of energy. It absorbs the unimaginable amount of carbon and in 1990 was included in the list of objects most burdensome for the natural environment.

It is located in central Poland near the city of Belchatow. In this place in the sixties years lignite deposits were discovered, in 1975 a decision was made to create a power plant using resources on site. After seven years of construction, in 1982 a power plant was launched to supply the declining industry after political changes. Poland was shifting from a centrally managed economy system to a free market system. Large plants were closed to cottage industry. Poland ceased to be an economic power.

The area of the Belchatow power plant complex covers an area of 25 km in length and 3 km i width. It includes a power plant, a mine with a production capacity of 38,5 million tons of coal per year, technical infrastructure areas and two ash storage sites after coal combustion.

A huge coal-fired power plants is a huge amount of ashes an slag, which after CO2 emissions int the atmosphere are another problem for the natural environment. Power plant’s furnace waste has an excessively alkaline reaction 8,5 pH on average and a high salt concentration acting cytotoxic, they are subjected to restrictions on special storage.

At the Belchatow power plant, an insulated, tight (against penetration of the composition to ground water) tanks was made, into which water is pumped together with ash forming a thick slug. Water evaporates along with some toxic substances and ash under its own mass forms more and more dense layer of sediment. Tanks for waste in its current state has already become quite a large embankment or a small mountain. Its edges are covered with barren soil and planted with birch stands, which are best sited foe such reclamation and protection against slope erosion. Other plants sch as pine and self-seeding bushes are already appearing behind the birch planting belt. This is how artificial mountains arise from waste, diversifying the landscape with greenery. Nobody needs to know what they hide inside.

I tired to get more information about the plant power, but the spokesperson Sandra Apanasionek for the Belchatow power plant complex ignored my appetite for knowledge. Ignorance is a typical feature of Poles’ mentality. Poles are very proud of their shallow culture and lac of knowledge. That is why there are still coal-fired power plants in Poland, which are closed in highly developed countries ending with the energetic coal age. Meanwhile, next open-cast mines are being launched around the Belchatow power plant and more and more money is being invested in the development of coal-based electricity. Penalties for Poland for excessive CO2 emissions are borne by the citizens in taxes. (Brux)

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