Everything about The Inco Superstack totally explained
The
Inco Superstack in
Sudbury,
Ontario, with a height of 380 m (1,247 ft), is the tallest
chimney in
Canada and the
Western hemisphere, and the
second tallest freestanding chimney in the world after the
GRES-2 Power Station in
Kazakhstan. It is also the second tallest freestanding structure of any type in Canada, ranking behind the
CN Tower but ahead of
First Canadian Place.
It was constructed by
Inco Limited in
1972 at an estimated cost of 25 million dollars; from the date of its completion until the GRES-2 chimney was constructed in
1987, it was the world's tallest smokestack. Between the years 1972-75 it was the tallest freestanding structure in Canada.
The Superstack sits atop the largest
nickel smelting operation in the world at Inco's
Copper Cliff processing facility in the city of Greater Sudbury.
The structure was built to disperse
sulphur gases and other byproducts of the smelting process away from the city itself. As a result, these gases can be detected in the atmosphere around Greater Sudbury in a 150 mile radius of the Inco plant. Prior to the construction of the Superstack, the waste gases caused severe ecological damage in the area around Sudbury. This included an almost total loss of native vegetation in some areas, giving the city a reputation as a barren, rocky wasteland.
Construction of the Superstack allowed the city to launch an environmental reclamation plan which has included rehabilitation of water bodies such as
Lake Ramsey, and an ambitious regreening plan which has seen over three million new
trees planted in the city. In
1992, the city was given an award by the
United Nations in honour of its environmental rehabilitation programs. Despite these efforts, much of the environmental damage to the Sudbury area is permanent, particularly to exposed rocky outcrops, which have been dyed jet black by
acid rain in a layer which penetrates up to three inches into the once pink-gray
granite.
While the Superstack lowered the ground-level pollution in the city, it also dispersed the gases over a much larger area. This led to a slow rise in
acidity of lakes in the area, to the point where by the late
1980s up to 7,000 lakes were severely damaged due to acid rain. Starting in the early
1990s, a major construction effort started to dramatically clean the waste gases before pumping them up the Superstack, removing around 90% of the
sulphur dioxide. The upgrades were completed in
1994, and emissions from then on are much reduced . Further reductions in emissions are planned.
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