[TowerTalk] lightening Strikes

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It's good to have humor in the thread.

Many years ago our company looked into the disposal and reuse of concrete. 
I had done
lab test inducing high voltage and high current into concrete.  The theory 
was that the
electro-chemical reaction would separate the concrete into some of it's 
components.
Some test were done at a Colorado facility with streamers from ground to 
cloud lightening.
The concrete did fracture and in some cases exploded.  The cases that 
exploded were concrete
that had rebar through the broken concrete.  There can be many answers why 
it happened .
Possible reaction of water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, or other explosive 
gases produced.
The bottom line is that the amount of energy produced from a lightening 
strike is enormous.

Fast forward from the 1975 to today. On going  research a few years ago 
repeated our experiments.
I think a German company now has a process were they reuse, separate, the 
concrete by an electricity.

A direct strike on the tower would discharge the energy to ground through 
the base to ground.
Even if the concrete base would not explode, it would be weaken enough to 
fail.

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