Trojan Nuclear Plant Demolished
Well to be more precise, the cooling tower at Portland General Electric‘s Trojan Nuclear Power Plant was demolished today (May 21st, 2006). The nuclear plant was comissioned back in 1976 and generated over 1100 megawatts. Because of cost-effectiveness, PGE closed down the plant (I have a feeling it was more because people are scared of nuclear power… silly) in 1993. In 1999 the nuclear reactor was sent up the Columbia River by barge to the Department of Energy’s Hanford nuclear waste site. In May of last year Trojan was certified as radiologically decommissioned (meaning it was safe for other facilities to be maintained on the Trojan property). As part of the decomissioning, the large cooling tower was finally demolished.
Portland General Electric has put out a great video of the demolition: Trojan Demolition (WMV, 5.18 MB, right click and select “save as”). They have also put up a page about the demolition and a number of pages of photographs: here, here, here, and here. There are also some historical photos here.
My very first picnic was at Trojan’s park during a public outreach day. Good times. 
Isaac Marion over at Burning Building has an awesome photo essay titled “Nuclear Summer” that you should check out (I think it is from the Satsop Nuclear plant, but I could be wrong). His brother, Nathan from BlueTree.org has also pointed to a few more video clips here and here. I also found this, this, this (from this blogger) and this.
And some more photos:
More of my first picnic:
We were watching it on TV (Rachel went down and saw it live with the cousins)and about 10 seconds after it imploded we finally heard it. BTW, quarter of the way through Song of Sus.:)
Hi Matt,
You may be interested in one of my recent posts called “The Jesus Theory (Part 1)… I am asking for knowledgeable comments to further explain the position of the trinity. I would like you to expound on it if you have time and knowledge of the subject.
By the way… I lived in Portland for nearly 5 years. My guess is that Oregonians are probably in support of this demolition overall.
Thanks.
You didn’t go see it Sal? Come on! You are so close by! If you can, download the video (might take a while on your connection…) it has some great shots (including inside the tower).
You read too fast! I am obout 100 pages into Song. Wasn’t the end of Wolves awesome? I really enjoyed that book!
I will check it out when I have a few minutes Al-Hakim. I have a feeling that most Orgonians were in favor of it as well.
She had to wake up a 5am to fight traffic and find a spot and see it once. I slept in til 7am and watched it 45 times from 45 different angles from my nice cozy bed!
Wolves was good, I’m glad I finally finished it. I’m getting antsy to know everything but I don’t want it to end too soon. Maybe I’ll save the Tower for the beach trip.
I know that Nuclear Power is a clean, cheap energy, but isn’t the problem always ~what to do with the waste by-products~?
Heh, ok, fair enough.
I am getting antsy too! There is so much that I need to know! So many different whens and wheres!
Yeah, dealing with waste is one of the main issues. And that is something the technology always helps with. Hanford over in east WA is one of the big disposal sites and they have had issues with seepage into the ground. If things are stored correctly and safely they really aren’t a problem. The only issue then would be space. If space and storage aren’t a problem, then it is a much better resource than fossil fuels or solar or wind. Hydro is pretty good (which WA and OR get most of their power from) but just requires a lot of stations. I am still on board for nuclear because you can get so much power out of one station. It is just crucial that the waste is handled correctly.
I don’t know if you know already, but the UW’s nuclear reactor building is now in the process of being prepared for demolition. That was just a small research reactor, however.
http://www.cpo.washington.edu/PTS/ProjOverview.aspx?ProjNum=10492
http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?articleID=23536
I didn’t even know UW had a nuclear reactor, I guess I should have taken a nuclear physics class (and I do wish I had)! Learn something new every day I guess!
Nuclear physics was one of the more interesting labs I took. Unfortunately the reactor was long gone by the time I took that class. Apparently they used to obtain radioactive sources for certain experiments by sending a bottle of saltwater up to the reactor to be irradiated!!
I think I had a choice between the nuclear lab or optics lab. Not sure why I picked optics because I loved nuclear stuff. Although the optics lab was pretty cool too. Oh well!
my dad worked there
Is this one (http://www.mattjonesblog.com/img/trojan/trojanSouth2.jpg) copyrighted in any way?
I am sure it is, it is a Portland General Electric image and they probably copyright all their stuff.