Two hulking towers nearly 300 feet high rise from the steel-making complex that dominates the shoreline of the faded industrial city of Port Talbot in Wales.
These two blast furnaces are centerpieces of Britain’s largest steel-making facility, a four-square-mile complex of cavernous factories and rusting metal conveyors on Swansea Bay that produce steel eventually used in cars, cans for baked beans and sports stadiums.
But these massive structures may be gone in a few years or even months if the plant’s owners, Tata Steel, and the British government have their way. Their plan could turn this Port Talbot facility into one of Europe’s most sweeping efforts to slash greenhouse-gas emissions in heavy industry.
Tata, which is based in India, wants to replace the blast furnaces and other parts of the plant dating to the 1950s with one of the world’s largest electric arc furnaces. These devices use a completely different technology: high-voltage current to melt scrap metal from things like factory waste, junked cars and demolished buildings into crude steel that could then be processed by other Tata plants scattered around Britain.
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