Hacker News Reader

Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

Why is Johannesburg so bad?

That isn't Joburg. It's the power plants in the province east of Joburg - Mpumalanga. There are coal deposits there so they built a bunch of coal plants. Three mega plants in that vicinity - Majuba, Kusile and bit further north Medupi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpumalanga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majuba_Power_Station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusile_Power_Station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station

Are they just unusually dirty? It really stands out at a global-level, which is pretty "impressive".

I think it's a combination. Even by global standards these ones are very big plants and concentrated in a fairly small area. There are handful of other plants there too that I don't recall.

Dirty - yeah that too unfortunately. The plants tend to use worse grade coal (good stuff gets exported) and aside from Kusile they run without SO2 scrubbers, which is quite sketchy given the coal grade. Though this is a NO2 map so unsure how that translates. It's all a bit of a mess frankly

Fascinating. thank you!

Btw, for those like me who didn't know what Jo'burg's province is called, it's Gauteng!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauteng

Was going to ask the same question. There also is a spot in Poland that’s not in a large city - was curious about that one as well. Some sort of NO2-generating production? Also between DRC and Angola.

The emitter in Poland seems to be the brown coal (lignite) power plant Bełchatów.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Stat...

https://www.bing.com/maps?v=2&cp=51.266111~19.330278&style=h...

I enjoyed this documentary on the topic:

SMOG WARS - Polish Air Pollution Documentary (Full International Version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs70ewSdEjE

Reply on news.ycombinator.com