End Times for Cooling Towers? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Soweto

These two tall structures in the Soweto Township of Johannesburg, South Africa, are hard not to notice. They are decommissioned cooling towers that were once an important feature of the Orlando Power Station, a site that provided electricity to the highly populated region through the mechanism of burning coal.

The station was closed in 1998 but the site has been cleverly repurposed as an extreme sports destination; visitors are afforded the opportunity to partake in BASE jumping or bungee jumping from the platform that is found high up between the tops of the two towers. The structures themselves are both painted; one tower effectively acts as a giant billboard and the other is a cultural statement featuring depictions of life in the country.

Answer: Netherlands & Belgium

The contrast between the windmill and the cooling tower, two industrial buildings from completely different eras, is brilliantly captured by the photographer. This still operational site in Doel, on the Belgian side of the country's border with the Netherlands, retains a sense of beauty despite the harsh presence of industry.

Whilst many would argue that beautiful windmills such as the one pictured should be retained long after decommissioning as a reminder of the past, whether to keep or demolish large cooling towers is a more contentious issue.

The tendency is to destroy such towers - after all it is a significant undertaking to keep a structure like this safe and in a good state of repair - but there are groups who are fond of these buildings and campaign against their demolition. An example in the United Kingdom is the Twentieth Century Society (C20), a charity that - amongst other activities - argues for the retention of cooling towers as a means of celebrating industrial and architectural heritage.

Answer: No

To the east of Nashville, Tennessee, is Hartsville, a location that was earmarked as a site for the creation of a nuclear facility that - as shown in the artist's impression - was to feature four units (each with its own large cooling tower) across two plants (A and B). Construction got underway in the mid-to-late 1970s but not a single unit - A1, A2, B1 or B2 - ever reached completion; A1 was developed the furthest, making it as far as erecting the large, concrete cooling tower (though the interior was left unfinished).

The whole initiative was cancelled by the mid-1980s as, in addition to typical safety concerns related to nuclear, it was considered too costly and the projected demand for the electricity did not materialise. The one cooling tower that was erected was demolished in 2025 (there are many videos of this available online). Other components of the site remain abandoned.

Answer: East Midlands Parkway

There are many traditionally beautiful sights and scenes across Great Britain that can be witnessed through the window of a train. This is not one of them but every time I pass by these imposing cooling towers on the site of the now closed Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, I am completely transfixed. They are magnificent.

The Midland Main Line (MML) runs from the domestic platforms of London St. Pancras International to the East Midlands cities of Leicester, Derby and - via a branch or spur - Nottingham. Beyond Derby, the route continues on to Sheffield, a city in Yorkshire famed for steel, snooker and the 1997 film, 'The Full Monty'. An intermediate stop on this line - and situated immediately adjacent to these cooling towers - is East Midlands Parkway station; whilst waiting on the platform for your train, you get to experience one of the best industrial views anywhere in the country (if that is your thing, of course)!

Answer: Brussels

Whilst cooling towers can be considered appealing in their own way, it is difficult to argue against the fact that they are an austere presence in built-up areas. The appearance of a cooling tower in Drogenbos, in the outskirts of Brussels and on the canal that connects the Belgian capital to the industrial city of Charleroi, has been softened somewhat by the use of over 100,000 LEDs (light emitting diodes).

This installation is part of a "living architecture" movement in Belgium called "magic monkey" (in reference to a company that has been heavily involved in the build of such features).

Answer: Savannah

Captured in this picture are the last seconds in the lifetime of the K-reactor cooling tower at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina before it was reduced to nothing more than a pile of rubble in 2010. The cooling tower was built to enhance environmental standards in the area, particularly the improvement in the quality of water being returned from the industrial complex to the Savannah River.

As a youngster I watched the demolition of cooling towers in my local area; from a hilltop near Port Talbot in South Wales, I watched the structures at the BP Oil Refinery (Llandarcy) collapse in on themselves and crumble to the ground in the early 2000s. One of many moments in Welsh history where the country took a step away from its industrial past and, for good or for ill (or indeed for both), moved toward a post-industrial future.

Answer: Nuclear

This picture is of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station or, for the sake of brevity, Three Mile Island (TMI). It was the site of a nuclear accident in March 1979 where one of the reactors (TMI-2) began emitting radioactive materials into the atmosphere.

Whilst no deaths or injuries are said to have arisen directly from the event (though a number of studies have arrived at different conclusions on post-event incidence of cancer in the vicinity), the incident has had a profound effect on global attitudes toward the use of nuclear material.

Answer: Hyperboloid structures

As is strongly hinted at by their name, the function of cooling towers is to assist in the removal of excess heat. These towers - whilst most associated in fiction with nuclear facilities - are a feature of thermal power plants, irrespective of the material used as an energy source. At a thermal plant, water is turned into steam, which in turn drives turbines and in so doing generates electricity.

Once the steam has gone through the turbines, there is then the question of what to do with it. Simply releasing the steam into the atmosphere is environmentally problematic (excess heat and humidity) and wasteful (the water cannot be reused). To avoid these issues, the steam is turned back into liquid water through a fairly complicated cooling process that is assisted by the hyperboloid (curved hourglass) shape of the tower. Not all cooling towers are hyperboloid and these large structures are becoming less popular as more modern solutions have emerged.

Tuzla Thermal Power Plant relies on coal as its energy source and is the largest power plant in the Balkan state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Answer: Tyne

The Stella power stations were separated by the Tyne into Stella North (near Newcastle) and Stella South (near Gateshead). The four large hyperboloid cooling towers on the right of the image were located in Stella South; demolition of these landscape-dominating structures took place in 1992 whilst the twin chimneys that can just about be seen behind the cooling towers were demolished in 1995.

A couple of years later, very little remained of the power stations; the twin chimneys on the left of the image were, in July of 1997, the last major structures to be removed.

Answer: Amusement park

Wunderland Kalkar is not just notable for its use of a cooling tower as an attraction but for transforming an entire factory into an amusement park. The tower features a climbing wall on the outside whilst housing a large swing ride within.

Situated close to Germany's border with the Netherlands and to the northwest of the cities of Duisburg and Essen, this curious park is very much in industrial territory. Before becoming a leisure attraction, the site was known as SNR-300, a proposed nuclear facility on the Rhine.

Whilst construction began in 1971, the idea of a nuclear power station existing at this location was never truly accepted by the populace and - with added pressure brought about by events at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 - the factory never reached the point of actually processing nuclear material. The facility was officially closed in 1991 and the amusement park opened in 1995. Such a great idea!