The fun of frazil ice

 

That was a fun thing for the old company's generating stations before 1991.  We engineers were forced to put in useless ice barriers, and then nothing happened since then when we had our warming cycle.  If they are getting it again, we won't hear about it.

Frazil ice is caused by super-cooled water.  If you have a coke bottle of pure water, you can cool it to below freezing.  Then drop in a single ice crystal, and the whole thing practically explodes as it freezes solid.

So we have the super-cooled water descending to the grates, and then freezing solid.  As the article says, once the ice becomes thick enough you can knock it off in sheets, and it floats up.  In general, it is almost impossible to deal with.  The brand-new Pickering B plant looks like it may get an underwater intake which solves this problem.  However, I don't look and I don't tell.  That station has a major foundation problem, which I have imagined.