Tagebau Hambach and VI-HPS Inauguration

Wednesday I attended the inauguration of the Virtual Institute for High Productivity Supercomputing, a new academic effort at Jülich. Most of the day was scheduled for lectures, which weren't too bad. I met Douglas Post, the Chief Scientist for the United States Department of Defense, and also a few researchers from Tennessee, Oregon, and Dresden. You could tell who Douglas Post worked for. His keynote address bristled with phrases like "smart bomb" and "F-16 turbine" and "gulf coast oil rig" and "terrorist threat".

But the really exciting stuff was after the lectures when we went on an "excursion" to the largest open coal mine in Europe: Tagebau Hambach. Our guide was exactly what you'd hope to find in a coal mine. (Not Dick Cheney; that's what you wish to find in a coal mine.) Our guide was a short, densely-built, muscular German with thick wiry red hair and beard who looked like his favorite past time was banging rocks together. He was clearly very familiar with mining and the English tour was excellent.


Some of Germany's finest minds encased in green plastic. The lady in red is wearing high-heels, poor fool. I valiantly caught her in my arms as she fell from our all-terrain bus.


Photos can't properly describe the sheer size of Tagebau Hambach. It was first opened in 1978 and will continue to produce coal for another forty-or-so years. The coal layer is 70 meters deep, the deepest deposit in Europe. Mining the entire strip will require relocating three towns and an enormous forest. Sad as that is, the environmental directors take their job very seriously. Every square kilometer of destroyed forest is duplicated as exactly as possible on the far side of the mine. Seeds and saplings from the original plants are used, and even ant hills and wasp nests are transported. A few days before, I went running in the relocated forest and was completely unaware that it was "artificial." It's probably not as good as the original, but it's better than many mining companies have done in past. Actually, the company is not required to rebuild the destroyed forest. They're doing it just because they like trees.


Looks like Mordor to me.


This is the "bucket wheel" of one of the six 245 meter tall excavators. That wheel is about the size of a small house and can be moved with millimeter precision. The main structure is tracked via GPS and local computer equipment and can be moved by centimeters. Four operators take two-hour shifts controlling the massive wheel.


After Tagebau Hambach, we went to Burg Obbendorf for a three-course buffet dinner (I was inordinately pleased that I could identify by taste two out of three wines served). A little rain storm came in just before dinner, leaving this gorgeous rainbow.

God has blessed me so much this summer. It's just amazing.