Why yes, it was dark in that nuclear reactor (25 pics)

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to tour a never finished nuclear power plant. Some portions were nearly finished; some only partially. Then it was mothballed in the 1980s due to financial problems, power demand not as expected, and public disfavor, then finally declared a failed project at great monetary loss, and given back to the community. I was there to see an acoustical testing lab (NWAA Labs) utilizing some of the huge rooms, but we also got a tour of pretty much the whole plant.

Flashlight-wise, I was not quite prepared. While there is some fixed lighting inside, there are no windows, it's huge, and there is only some basic construction lighting. I had my EDC (HDS B42, with SSC-P4) and a Fenix P2D head with 2XAA body - both OK for watching one's step in a construction area, but woefully inadequate to see into a gigantic black pit, or up a containment vessel.

Pics: even the guys with DSLRs were complaining about the lack of light.
Exterior: It was a twin plant, with 2 reactors, 2 cooling towers, and a common building that was to house the turbines. The wasp-waisted cooling towers are some 600 feet high. The reactor containment is the cylindrical silo, and control/support building around it. It's bigger than it looks in the photos.





Interiors:
Looking into the round access doors to the reactor containment inside. Concrete walls are 5 feet thick.






Spaces between the reactor vessel and containment silo.




Fuel processing tanks are Olympic size and several stories deep, and lined in stainless steel. Fenix barely lit it up.




You can see why I needed a TK40. Check the rebar.





Construction hazards abound


The reason I was there - an acoustic test facility, one of the biggest in the world.




The turbine room between the reactors is 600 feet long. Another company builds huge liquid tanks in there for industry. The acoustic lab uses a corner for speaker testing (with the white arc holding test mikes)



The water cooling towers are 600 feet high. This one was not finished with the plumbing. The acoustics are unique.

This is very cool! Thanks for posting it!

Very, very cool. These shed a bit more light (heh!) on just what it takes to contain and harness the awesome power of atomic reaction. Thank you for sharing!

Great pics; The cooling tower looks like a great location for a party..

Maybe I missed it... but WHERE is this at?

some of that would make a good movie set .

I would love to tour this plant, was this a private media type event or is this something that is open to the public? Nice pictures by the way.

Very interesting. 5 feet thick concrete walls make a great fallout shelter.oo: Thanks for sharing.

This is about 100 miles southwest of Seattle. It's not open to the public AFAIK; I was there to visit the acoustic test lab renting space there. The local government owners are trying to turn it into an industrial park, but can't afford to tear down the reactors. Not many businesses can utilize an unfinished nuclear reactor.

Great pics - what a site! It would make a superb movie location.

This is one of the most interesting things I've seen. I could think of several uses. You could turn the cooling towers into 60-story apartment buildings. Or perhaps make a theme park. Have a roller coaster spiral down the outside of one cooling towers and then up the other to slow down. By my math it would hit ~130 mph on the way down. Another use for the cooling towers might be a vertical farm. The reactor vessel itself would make a great fallout/disaster shelter. And of course, any part of the plant would be a great movie set.

In 2006 we decommissioned the Trojan Nuclear Power Station along the Columbia River. The cooling tower was removed by documented filming of the implosion.

wow, the inside of those cooling towers are unique. I would love to explore there.

Thanks for posting Louie - looks like an amazing place to explore - I'm jealous.

Thanks for posting, certainly an eye-opener.

Btw, wasn't Wolverine's final fight scene shot there at the top of the cooling tower?

Neat pictures. I think Silverfox has some lights that would do the trick.

Renting out space is just a matter of desire and price. I sure wouldn't tear it down - hardened buildings like that are a treasure.

The construction engineering was certainly impressive. It would be nice to preserve it as an engineering example, like a museum. It would take a lot of money; now, except for the minimal tenants, it's basically a 28 year old, abandoned construction site, in need of a lot of cleanup and safety improvements. Even routine maintenance, like painting the 600 ft. stairs, is probably being neglected due to cost.

I did not realize we would get a full tour outside of the acoustic lab, which is why I was poorly prepared, light-wise. Actually, I don't have any nice, small hand-helds with more than about 180 lumens, so I'm thinking of something along the lines of a Maelstrom X10 for the next time. It was hard to juggle the camera, get interesting shots, watch for dangers, wield a couple of lights and an audio recorder, keep an eye out for our group, try to listen to our host's info, and take it all in.

I've always been a nuclear nut, I'm jealous

Nice pics. Seems like a waste though. To have come that close to completion and then just to leave it all behind.

Great pics! I would like to tour it too. Those cooling towers are amazing. I bet the whole experience was awesome.