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Right next to the West Seattle Bridge, just as it comes down from West Seattle, there is a steel mill. Now part of Nucor, it has been around under one owner or another for about a hundred years. If you look, and it is one of the 5 days out of 7 that they're running, you can see red hot billets of fresh steel emerging from the plant as you drive by. It's quite beautiful, and I always try to catch a glimpse. A couple of months ago I decided I should email them and ask if they give tours. Yesterday it finally happened.
It's a neat little plant. Small in both output (under a million tons of product a year) and size. It's surrounded on two sides by a nice residential neighborhood, and they're so clean that most people in Seattle have no idea we have a steel mill.
The heart of the plant is the electric arc furnace, where the scrap is melted. We watched from the control room, maybe ten meters away. A pot the size of a small house is filled with scrap, a lid swings over it, and 3 giant graphite electrodes (a meter across and several tall) are lowered down through holes in the lid. Each has independent control and is constantly moving up and down depending on the state inside. Several megawatts of power is pumped through, which turns very efficiently into heat, melting the scrap, and shooting out jets of flame, smoke and sparks. Once the first batch is melted, more scrap is added. The electrodes are removed, glowing bright orange and tapered towards the end where the heat has eaten away at them. The lid pivots open, first just a line of brilliant white, then a gaping maw of pure heat energy. A crane swings over and drops another couple of tons of scrap into the bath, which erupts in a roiling wall of flames, filling the entire field of view. The crane retracts, the lid swings back into place, and the electrodes lower back into place. A new arc is struck, and the early, unstable arcs shake the entire building with a deep roar. Blinding, flickering white arclight shines up from the furnace as the electrodes start to dance again. It's a force of nature, a pocket volcano, a towering pyre to Moloch. My eyes ached for hours from the UV, and it was absolutely gorgeous.
It's a neat little plant. Small in both output (under a million tons of product a year) and size. It's surrounded on two sides by a nice residential neighborhood, and they're so clean that most people in Seattle have no idea we have a steel mill.
The heart of the plant is the electric arc furnace, where the scrap is melted. We watched from the control room, maybe ten meters away. A pot the size of a small house is filled with scrap, a lid swings over it, and 3 giant graphite electrodes (a meter across and several tall) are lowered down through holes in the lid. Each has independent control and is constantly moving up and down depending on the state inside. Several megawatts of power is pumped through, which turns very efficiently into heat, melting the scrap, and shooting out jets of flame, smoke and sparks. Once the first batch is melted, more scrap is added. The electrodes are removed, glowing bright orange and tapered towards the end where the heat has eaten away at them. The lid pivots open, first just a line of brilliant white, then a gaping maw of pure heat energy. A crane swings over and drops another couple of tons of scrap into the bath, which erupts in a roiling wall of flames, filling the entire field of view. The crane retracts, the lid swings back into place, and the electrodes lower back into place. A new arc is struck, and the early, unstable arcs shake the entire building with a deep roar. Blinding, flickering white arclight shines up from the furnace as the electrodes start to dance again. It's a force of nature, a pocket volcano, a towering pyre to Moloch. My eyes ached for hours from the UV, and it was absolutely gorgeous.