Are Ski events at 2022 Olympic Games took place near a nuclear power plant
Ski events at the 2022 Olympic Games took place near a nuclear power plant.
In February 2022, as the Winter Olympic Games kicked off in Beijing, rumours started to circulate on social media. Most social media fans were a little surprised to see that some of the ski events were being held on what looked to some like the remnants of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
While these tweets were likely posted humorous – the Chernobyl nuclear disaster took place in Ukraine in 1986, while the 2022 Olympics are being held in China and many people appeared to believe that the large structures in the background belonged to a nuclear power plant.
Though the photos are real, but this is not the site of a nuclear power plant now, much less that of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Those structures are not nuclear silos. In fact, this ski event took place near an old steel mill, with furnaces, chimney stacks, and old silos visible in the background. We rate this as Miscaptioned.
CNN reported:
Behind the skiers launching themselves off the 60-meter-high (196-foot) ramp are furnaces, tall chimney stacks and cooling towers on the site of a former steel mill that for decades contributed to the Chinese capital’s notoriously polluted skies.
The mill, founded in 1919, ceased operations more than 15 years ago, as part of efforts to clear the air in the capital ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics.
According to NPR, some of those silos have been converted into office spaces, while others were used to make snow for the Olympic games.
The host of “Morning Edition,” Steve Inskeep, and reporter Emily Feng discussed the Olympics’ steel mill setting
No, the Olympics’ Big Air Ski Jump Isn’t next to a Beijing Nuclear Power Plant.
