Perhaps the only time you'll be happy to see a nuclear cooling tower explode.
May 22, 2006 3:23 PM   Subscribe

Over the weekend Oregon's Portaland General Electric demolished the decomissioned Trojan Nuclear Plant's 499ft cooling tower using 1.3 tons of TNT. Plenty of implosion pr0n is all that remains. Oh, and the containment dome, a bunch of rods with no home, some asbestos, but the tower, man, that's gone.
posted by Ogre Lawless (43 comments total)
 
I'm going to miss seeing the ol' Springfield Nuclear Power Plant every time I head up the 5.
posted by pieisexactlythree at 3:33 PM on May 22, 2006


Arranging explosives such that when they explode a building collapses in on itself is not an implosion. That's simply arranging explosives around a building such that when they explode the building collapses in on itself. An implosion has a very precise scientific definition.

Buildings are colloquially, though mistakenly, described to implode when demolished through explosives, causing them to collapse on themselves.
posted by ChasFile at 3:46 PM on May 22, 2006


Ooh, was Stacey involved?
posted by gdav at 3:48 PM on May 22, 2006


.
posted by Skwirl at 3:50 PM on May 22, 2006


I few months ago I bought on eBay a circuit board holder that turned out to have a sticker indicating it was once used at the Trojan plant. I wonder if the thing is contaminated.
posted by exogenous at 3:55 PM on May 22, 2006


The Trojan tower was a PDX landmark, the kind that bands get photographed in front of.
posted by dw at 4:11 PM on May 22, 2006


Trojan was an awesome place to visit as a kid. I lived in Longview, WA for a bit and we'd go visit my Grandpa in Portland. Often times we'd stop along at Trojan and have a picnic and go into the visitor area.

There were all sorts of neat interactive displays about nuclear power. I learned quite a bit there and I suspect that was one of the big reasons I wanted to study nuclear physics in college. As it turned out, I didn't care for the physics faculty where I went, but nonetheless, my interest in atomic and subatomic physics remains.

Its a shame that nuclear power had all the problems that it did (especially at Trojan). From an 8 year old geeks perspective back in the early 80's, it was like living in the future.

Sadly, the memor and remaining public debt associated with Trojan means that nuclear power will have a very tough time gaining acceptance in the Northwest any time soon. So its with a bittersweet feeling that we bid Trojan adieu.
posted by afflatus at 4:29 PM on May 22, 2006


PDX Flickr Group takes an early morning trip to the Trojan Explosion.
posted by mnology at 4:34 PM on May 22, 2006


Aside; I've never understood why some Portlanders refer to the city by its airport code. It seems to be more common among newer arrivals. In any event I don't know of any other city where that's common.. Perhaps it's to distinguish it from Portland, Maine, but I doubt it, since few people who didn't know what city you were talking about to begin with are likely to recognize its airport code.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:43 PM on May 22, 2006


My good friend lives across the river from the (now ex-)tower. She had a morning destruction party as she's got a wonderful view. I'll ask her about it this evening...
posted by Parannoyed at 4:52 PM on May 22, 2006


I've always liked cooling towers. Just a gorgeous, simple, imposing structure. In a thousand years, after the apocalypse, I think they'd be among the most totemic things around in the eyes of the primitive agrarians living in our ashes.

I was so excited* about the Trojan Implosion, I wrote a song. [Self-link, natch.] If someone were bored, they might grab implosion footage and get their ytmnd on.

*it was such a slow news day

posted by cortex at 5:07 PM on May 22, 2006


Ha, ChasFile actually cited Wikipedia as a source. Did that page used to say what you quoted? (And I SWEAR it wasn't me who changed it.)
posted by smackfu at 5:08 PM on May 22, 2006


(Confidential to George_Spiggot—I think we just think it sounds cool. It's fun to say, for one thing: "pee dee ecks!")
posted by cortex at 5:08 PM on May 22, 2006


Aside; I've never understood why some Portlanders refer to the city by its airport code.

Good question. When I moved here 13 years ago, that's what everyone else was doing, so I figured, when in Rome... and haven't given it much thought since.

/derail
posted by pieisexactlythree at 5:14 PM on May 22, 2006


"I've never understood why some Portlanders refer to the city by its airport code. ... In any event I don't know of any other city where that's common.. Perhaps it's to distinguish it from Portland, Maine, but I doubt it, since few people who didn't know what city you were talking about to begin with are likely to recognize its airport code."

I'll agree that it is strange how we Portlanders refer to the city by its airport code. You wanna know what I think is even more strange though? The Phoenix Suns using their airport code in their logo on their center court.

It's one thing to call yourself by your airport code. At least both have one of those "extreme" exes in them. It's another to use one in a graphic or a logo.

p.s. Go Clips!
posted by pwb503 at 5:29 PM on May 22, 2006


Aside; I've never understood why some Portlanders refer to the city by its airport code.

I think Seattleites do it because it's a little derogatory to refer to a city by its airport code, as if there's nothing else there.
posted by dw at 5:35 PM on May 22, 2006


Hmm. I'm Portland born and raised and I use PDX quite often. I might be an outlyer, though. I suspect it all started for me with the PDXBBS*.txt listings. Good times.
posted by Skwirl at 5:40 PM on May 22, 2006


Heh, chasfile's wiki link now links to this
posted by delmoi at 5:48 PM on May 22, 2006


It's too bad that we here in the states have never found a way to make nuclear power safe and economical, otherwise we'd have a relatively clean source of energy as opposed to an unwinnable war.
posted by Afroblanco at 5:52 PM on May 22, 2006


You wanna know what I think is even more strange though? The Phoenix Suns using their airport code in their logo on their center court.

At least the letters P, H and X are actually in the name of the city, unlike PDX.

p.s. Go Clips!

Your favorite team sucks! Go Suns!
posted by mullacc at 5:53 PM on May 22, 2006


Go Blazers!

Seriously. To Toronto or something. Just go.
posted by cortex at 5:56 PM on May 22, 2006


I'm adding "implosion pr0n" to my personal lexicon.
posted by ori at 6:10 PM on May 22, 2006


Man, I was just there last summer, canoeing down the Columbia. It was beautiful and haunting, seeing this old, abandoned nuclear station with all of its vintage signs and strangely shaped buildings and weird old pipes sticking out. I love solid, industrial history, especially when it's surrounded by nature. The hard cliffs and the tiny little beaches on the island that the nuclear station was on made it all just perfect.

I'm sad that it's gone, but at least it was well-documented. Sheesh.
posted by blacklite at 6:59 PM on May 22, 2006


I enjoyed the "Arial" view.
I wish they had a Bodoni DemiBold view, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:00 PM on May 22, 2006


Also, I understand using PDX occasionally for Portland because it's a cool set of letters. And it makes Portland seem all high-tech and futuristic. Which, you know, it could claim to be at times; there's a large Intel-employed population there.

There aren't any Canadian cities that do that, as far as I know, but Vancouver International refers to itself as 'YVR' in all of its PR material. It seems to work for them. And of course we can't forget that Rush has a song named YYZ. (Toronto!)

/threadhijack
posted by blacklite at 7:03 PM on May 22, 2006


I'm sad that it's gone, but at least it was well-documented. Sheesh.

blacklite, if you want local nuclear legacy that really lasts, just head upstream a bit (okay, about 2/3rds of a stateful) to Hanford. Admittedly that's a lot of paddlin' so instead you could just wait for it to come to you.

[On preview, I assumed, incorrectly, you were in Portland]
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:11 PM on May 22, 2006


The local paper did a great job covering the demolition -- from the time it was announced through to the end. The paper -- The Daily News (which at one point one a Pulitzer Prize and this year swept a Washington state journalism contest) -- also explained the politics, science and cultural myths behind the cooling tower and Trojan power plant, and provided public space for people to talk about the event.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 7:36 PM on May 22, 2006






That was awesome.

But there is no explosion that beats this one.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:11 PM on May 22, 2006


Nuclear plants are expensive, but what exactly is unsafe about them?

Dude, you've got to be kidding me.

First off, even though the number of people directly killed by the Chernobyl accident is numbered at 56, the number of people who will die an early death because of the accident is anywhere from 9,000 to 200,000. And this is just Chernobyl! What about all the other close calls (Fermi I, Three Mile Island, etc.) and grossly mismanaged sites (Hanford, Savannah River, etc.) Keep in mind that we've only had nuclear energy for about 60-odd years. Let's face it, we don't exactly have an illustrious history splitting the atom.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a strong proponent of nuclear energy. I would be most in favor of a program that features pebble bed reactors built according to a standardized design. This would address both safety and cost issues.

However, to brush off the very real problems of nuclear power is to do a disservice to humanity.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:14 PM on May 22, 2006


YYZ.

Sorry, what were we talking about?
posted by flabdablet at 10:55 PM on May 22, 2006


Oh, right. Reactors.

My smart friend John is a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor design, because it's (a) passively safe (b) designed to reuse as fuel what would end up as high level waste with other designs (c) extract 99% of the available energy from the fuel instead of 1% (d) make the fuel reprocessing task simple enough to be done on-site (e) run on fuel that's so much lower-grade than weapons-grade as to draw a very big distinction between a reactor fuel production program and a weapons production program, thus making it implausible for governments to claim their weapons-grade fuel production facility is actually intended for peaceful uses.

His arguments are pretty good, and if my available options for Things To Support were restricted to nuclear power plants, I'd support IFR's. But I don't expect to see them deployed in my lifetime, because of a combination of basic economics and point (e).

Nuclear power generators are already so expensive, and offer such a poor return on investment, that they have no private-enterprise customers; the only organizations currently contemplating ordering new reactors are governments. I can't think of a single government that would want to miss out on a plausibly deniable weapons production program.

Energy efficiency is where we have to go. It's cheaper than nukes, easier than nukes, will make more profit for more people than nukes, and will help rather than hinder the process of cutting over to sustainable, renewable energy sources.
posted by flabdablet at 11:19 PM on May 22, 2006


Chernobyl was by far the worst nuclear disaster, and it killed a tiny number of people directly. With respect to indirect deaths - how many deaths have there been due to oil and coal power?

I simply cannot grasp the comparison. This, to me, is like saying, "Well, to be fair, nuclear weapons have only killed ~340,000 in the last century, which pales in comparison to the millions killed by small arms in that same time frame, so why not always use nuclear weapons?"

I'm not trying to set up a straw man here, but I'd sooner my fellow humans be nickle-and-dimed by mining disasters than have "mismanagement" result in 350,000 people relocated out of a 30km exclusion zone, a massive radioactive cloud falling over most of eastern Europe, and a statistically significant rise in horrific birth defects across the affected area.
posted by quite unimportant at 1:39 AM on May 23, 2006


Does Ontario still plan on decommissioning all of its coal power plants? I've been a bit out of touch with local news since I moved away.

Oh, and cool building implosion. I love that shit.
posted by antifuse at 1:40 AM on May 23, 2006


Hold up... here they contradict themselves - were the blasting caps non-electric or not?
posted by Tzarius at 2:50 AM on May 23, 2006


Nuclear power generators are already so expensive, and offer such a poor return on investment, that they have no private-enterprise customers; the only organizations currently contemplating ordering new reactors are governments. I can't think of a single government that would want to miss out on a plausibly deniable weapons production program.

Well, you have to take into account the reason for the high costs in the US - the fact that all of the reactors had different designs and were produced by different companies. This means that there is no standard, across-the-board protocol for safely building, servicing, and operating these plants.

I believe they have addressed this problem in France, whose nuclear power program has been far more successful then ours.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:48 AM on May 23, 2006


I always thought they should fill it with soil and plant a giant Douglas Fir in it, with a sign that said "Welcome to Oregon". No matter what they do with it, leaving all that concrete in place will eventually make a strange soil type for that area, so there will probably be some kind of biological marker there for a long time anyway. Still... the state tree woulda been nice.
posted by primdehuit at 12:00 PM on May 23, 2006


The problem of nuclear power remains the resultant radioactive waste. So the technology is still incomplete.
posted by Cranberry at 1:08 PM on May 23, 2006


People are clearly as rash, impulsive and stupid as they have been since the dawn of recorded history. I can only conclude that the threat of nuclear war has been remarkably effective.

I'll mention again that we've only had this technology for some 60-odd years. Don't you think it's a little early to declare it an unqualified success, especially since in that 60 years we've seen cities nuked, an entire region irrevocably poisoned, and countless close calls?

Now take into account that the results of all these mishaps last for thousands of years, compared to the 60 years that we've been playing around with the stuff.

I'd say that we have a pretty piss-poor track record thus far. This doesn't mean that things can't improve. In fact, I think that the survival of our civilization depends on us improving this technology.

However, when people deny the very real risks and tragedies associated with this technology, they make more reasonable people look bad, and ultimately weaken the case for nuclear power in the public's eyes.

Were you not so articulate, I would accuse you of trolling.
posted by Afroblanco at 3:12 PM on May 23, 2006


b1tr0t: you and I both agree that reducing greenhouse gas emission is something that needs urgent action. My argument is that what you're apparently proposing - replacing coal-fired power generators with nukes - is too little, too late.

It takes ten to fifteen years and a tremendous amount of capital to move a new nuclear plant from planning to lights-on. During those years, the construction of the plant is responsible for a net increase in greenhouse emissions. It doesn't start cutting emissions until the coal-fired plants it's replacing are decomissioned; which, absent any real push toward energy efficiency, may well be never.

By contrast, spending the same amount of capital on energy efficiency measures buys us at least five times as much greenhouse reduction, starting right away; and the fact that efficiency measures represent a lowering of energy demand makes that demand easier to fulfil with fully renewable power sources in future.

You could perhaps argue that it's not an either-or choice: we should be embracing energy efficiency as well as replacing fossil fuels with nukes. I would agree that we need to be replacing fossil fuels; but it seems to me that we need to be doing that as quickly as possible which means spending as much as we can on those measures that will reduce emissions as fast as possible. It's my considered opinion that (a) the economics of nukes mean that they don't fit that bill (b) the market agrees - the installed capacity of renewable generation methods is growing faster than that of any other energy-generation method (c) once we're running fully renewable generation we won't need nukes.

Yes, I *could* reduce my personal greenhouse emissions by giving up my little car and walking to work backwards on my hands in a Troy Hurtubise bear-fighting suit; but regardless of how cool a technology that bear suit is, a bicycle is cheaper and works better.

You really ought to track down a copy of Amory Lovins's book "Soft Energy Paths". If nothing else, it's a good starting point to move away from emotive hand-waving toward solid thinking based on real numbers.
posted by flabdablet at 5:42 PM on May 23, 2006


I don't think that aggressively eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by replacing coal with nuclear or (even better) non-polluting 'renewable' energy is "too little, too late." If we take that as our motto, then why bother implementing any new or existing but underutilized alternative to fossil fuels?

Electric vehicles and clean, relatively affordable small scale user owned solar / wind rigs are already widely available. Diesel semi trucks and trains could be phased out or converted to biodiesel. This would cost a lot of money, and would leave a bunch of people without jobs, but maybe for once the fucking economy has to take a back seat to more important matters.

If we spent the kind of money on the development and infrastructure of these kinds of alternatives that we do on Iraq and the war on tara (poor chick) we could already be much of the way there.
posted by Sukiari at 7:01 PM on May 24, 2006


By the way wind power here in Oregon is really growing. Most of the equipment is made here in Oregon as well which benefits the local economy more than imported petrochemicals and Virginia coal.
posted by Sukiari at 7:04 PM on May 24, 2006


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