Massive Iberdrola Cooling Tower Comes Down

Spanish multinational electricity utility company Iberdrola has carried out the destruction of a huge cooling tower which was captured on video.

The massive cooling tower is part of the Palencia thermal plant of Velilla del Río Carrión and it was removed as part of the dismantling process almost 60 years after the plant was first commissioned.

The company which shared this footage with Newsflash said that the destruction was also symbolic as it represented a move away from traditional energy to a green, competitive and more sustainable energy strategy.

They used electronic detonators with more than 80 kg of explosives to bring down the 7000-ton tower, but only after experts verified that there were no animals or nesting birds in the area and a 250-metre safety region was set up around the blast area.

The company is the largest non-coal electricity company in the world after it closed down 17 coal and diesel power plants worldwide in the last two decades, with the last two that were closed both being in Spain, at Velilla and Lada.

Once demolished which took precisely 5 seconds from blast to collapse, the rubble will now be recycled which is expected to take rather longer.

The company said that as the old factories were swept away, they were being replaced in the region with a mixture of renewable energy projects including wind and solar power.

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