Landmark tower at defunct nuclear plant faces demolition (Trojan OR)

[jpak]

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/05/15/a1.trojan.0515.p1.php?section=nation_world

<snip>

The plant was built near a geological fault in the Columbia River in the 1970s. In 1989, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined PGE for debris in two sumps that could have prevented its emergency core-cooling system from working in a disaster.

Its ongoing problems led many to believe that it was the inspiration for the error-ridden nuclear plant in the TV show ``The Simpsons,'' a creation of Portland-born Matt Groening. (Groening's representative said it is not.)

The plant rarely ran at full capacity, often stopping operations when there was a major snowmelt because PGE could buy excess hydroelectric power from nearby Bonneville Dam cheaper than the power plant could make it. And the market for energy was changing, making Trojan's operation more labor intensive and expensive than other alternatives.

So after steam tubes cracked and leaked radioactive gas into the air, PGE and regulators decided it made more financial sense to close the plant than to continue operations. Built for $460 million, Trojan was approved to be decommissioned at a $429 million total cost.

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[Up2Late]

1. They gonna blow it up good?

That would be fun to watch. :evilgrin:

[maxsolomon]

2. gonna truck all the concrete to hanford, no doubt

its the northwest's very own chernobyl.

[hunter]

3. If you were choosing a place to put nuclear waste...

...Hanford wouldn't be it.

It ended up there because the site was far from urban centers and had plenty of water to cool the plutonium production reactors.

Some truly unwise things were done at Hanford during the Cold War. One of the most extreme examples was the notorious "Green Run" which was an idiotic experiment by the Air Force that released 7,000 and 12,000 curies of iodine-131 into the air on December 2-3, 1949.

http://www.doh.wa.gov/Hanford/publications/history/release.html

[Dead_Parrot]

5. if the cooling tower is radioactive...

...then something went really wrong at that plant.

I'd be happier to see a few coal power-station cooling towers go down, but what do I know.

[depakid]

4. A fitting end for that boondoggle