Topic: Rain

"Traipsing Around in Radioactive Mud?"

With each step I took through the mud, I questioned my sanity that much more. Sure, I was wearing boots and I suppose that, in theory, they were at least somewhat waterproof, but the sound of the thick brown sludge squishing beneath my every step did not inspire confidence. It had clearly rained recently; I could tell that as soon as we climbed off of the train at what promised to be a full station but was, in reality, a single platform in the middle of a field in Charleroi, Belgium. Thankfully, as we hopped off the train and began our trek through the Belgian countryside, the sun was high in the sky and there was no longer a rain cloud in sight.

“Do we know where we’re going?” Jacob asked.

It took only a second of searching for my eyes to find the behemoth of a nuclear cooling tower hiding behind a thick collection of trees. I pointed straight ahead, and off we went, walking quickly down a path alongside the train tracks. Although Charleroi is a reasonably sized city and the train had only taken us around 10 minutes from the center of town, there was very little surrounding us. The train tracks stretched for miles through the field, and where there wasn’t field, there were trees. As we neared the cooling tower, I spotted a few additional industrial buildings and a river. We continued down the path for a while longer, until it met up with a road that appeared to lead straight to the cooling tower.

“Looks like it’s this way.” The closer we got to the tower, the larger it loomed. The pictures I had seen years before in an article for Slate couldn’t do justice to the size of this structure. It was tremendous. Huge! And we were going to climb it. Or at least that was the hope.

As we neared the tower, signs along the fence warned of danger and no trespassing, in both French and English. Still, the fence was rusty, the tower notoriously abandoned, and it wasn’t long before we came to a section where the fence was missing entirely. My heart surged. It was an easy way in and it inspired confidence; a telltale sign of a maintained structure (and likely one with active security) is a well-maintained fence. A well-maintained fence meant someone was inspecting it regularly and repairing it, while a rusted, deteriorating fence indicated few would mind our presence. Soon, we were approaching the tower and its only entrance: a small door at the top of a rusted metal staircase. And what was fixed to the door but a shiny, thick lock.

Our one general moral guideline in all of this is that we do not break and enter, so if a building is locked and secured, we just don’t go in. End of story. Cooling towers are inherently a bit different, given the general structure. And we’d come a long way, stopping only briefly in Charleroi as we journeyed between Brussels and Liege, the cooling tower our sole objective. As we surveyed the building, it was clear that the cylindrical structure rested on a concrete support with numerous holes and cutouts to allow for rapid water drainage when necessary. Perhaps there was a way up from underneath the structure, through one of the drainage holes. As we headed down a hill to investigate, I noticed a sign in French with a word that resembled 'radioactive'.

“Uhm. So. I’m pretty sure that sign said something about radioactivity,” I said, “which makes sense. This was a nuclear cooling tower.”

We continued on until we reached the underside of the structure, a labyrinth of concrete pillars, mud, and... tires. Someone had made a path two tires wide through the mud. Perfect. Balancing precariously on the outer edges of the tires, we made our way step by step, occasionally pausing to do a necessary limbo maneuver underneath a horizontal concrete slab. The corner of Jacob’s ukulele case met the thick sludge, the goo leaving a brown smear as he moved on to the next set of tires. Each time I reached a concrete limbo point, I had to swing my camera bag over the space at the top, bear hug the concrete pillar, and slowly shimmy my entire body underneath it, hoping to land squarely on the next set of tires. It was not an easy task, and it was not long before I missed a tire completely and found myself standing in the mud.

“Well, now that I’ve gotten out of the way,” I said, “Do you see any ladders? A way up? Anything that leads to the inside?”

“Nope. I mean, it may be possible to climb this wooden wall, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I think you’re probably right. I mean, how would we get down? Alright, should we get out of this mud then?”

“Yeah, let's do that.”

After pausing to take a few quick photos, I followed Jacob back through the rows of tires, quickly wiping my boots in the grass as soon as we emerged from beneath the tower. We made our way back through the missing fence panel and began our walk back to the train platform. It was then that we noticed a smaller, shorter (but still massive) cooling tower just down the road. It looked equally abandoned. We decided to check it out. A quick hop through a hole in the surrounding fence followed by a brief walk through the overgrown factory grounds and we made it to the tower. Although this tower was smaller, it had a metal staircase on the outside that led straight to the top. Perfect. Following Jacob, I climbed the staircase quickly, trying not to look down. When we reached the top, not only could we see miles of Belgian countryside, but also the cooling tower looming in the background. After taking a few pictures, we made our way down the staircase and began our journey back to the train platform.

“So,” I said, “Do you think that was radioactive mud?”