Nuclear Power MegaPost : Redux
The last Nuclear Power Megapost proved successful so here is another! I’ve been collating all the nuclear power themed entries since then and here are the most interesting of them.
Shoreham Nuclear Power Station
This is a plant that was never completed due to community opposition. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident residents were increasingly worried about proximity to nuclear power stations. Shoreham was never finished because residents argued that if anything did go wrong, the population of Long Island couldn’t be evacuated with only one direction to go (west) and only one major road to take (the Long Island Expressway).
Thanks Chris & Thomas Paul
Sequoyah Nuclear Plant
I know you’ve already done a “Nuclear Power Megapost,” but I just ran across this, and think it’s cool that you can almost see directly down the cooling towers. BTW, it’s TVA’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant.
Thanks Jay K
Chinon Nuclear Power Plant
This is the nuclear power plant of Chinon, a french town best known for its Cabernet Franc wine, with four very pretty cooling towers churning out steam.
Thanks Julien
Weldon Springs
The Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail and Museum at Weldon Spring, Missouri is where the government opened the Weldon Spring site to the public in 2002. The huge waste tomb spans 45 acres and is seven stories tall.
Thanks Bill
Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant
This is Bohunice nuclear power plant in Slovakia. A proper old-skool soviet era reactor. In February 22, 1977, the reactor suffered a major accident during refueling. Because of its age and old design the plant is currently undergoing a decommissioning process.
Thanks FeroG
Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant
This is the Iranian nuclear power plant under construction near the city of Bushehr. These two plants are one of the reasons that Iran and the west don’t get along. In 1995, Russia signed a contract to supply a light water reactor for the plant. Although the agreement calls for the spent fuel rods to be sent back to Russia for reprocessing, the US has expressed concern that Iran would reprocess the rods itself, in order to obtain plutonium for atomic bombs.
Thanks Paul, Bunsen, Pejvak DehDari & Bubba
Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant
This reactor is named after the first physicist to create a nuclear reactor and is located between Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. On October 5, 1966 a 94MWe prototype fast breeder reactor called Fermi-1 suffered a partial nuclear meltdown here. Thankfully no radiation was released off-site, and no one was injured.
Thanks David & Joe
I’m sure there are still plenty more interesting nuclear power sites so keep them coming!
Here on British tv at the moment AOl are running a campaign where they weigh up the pros and cons of the internet.
Without sounding like an awful suck up - this site continues to be a glowing endorsment for all that is good about the internet.
This latest power station post is just fantastic and just exemplifies why this site is perfect - informative but fascinating and engaging at the same time.
Brilliant, brilliant and brilliant!
Can i have my £5 now please? (in joke from the comic ‘viz’ btw to all you non Brits out there!)
Your readers might be interested to know there is a new techno-thriller novel about the American nuclear power industry, written by a longtime nuclear engineer (me), and available at no cost on the net. This book provides an entertaining and accurate portrait of the nuclear industry today and how a nuclear accident would be handled. It was written with the lay person in mind. It is called “Rad Decision�, and is at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com.
“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” - Stewart Brand, founder of “The Whole Earth Catalog.”
I live in Ohio and used to live in Detoit. The Enrico Fermi plant is between Detroit, MI and Toledo, OH. The plant is in Michigan, not Ohio, near Monroe, MI.
northern git: Thanks for the nice comments!
salguod: Thanks for that, that was pretty stupid of me…
The Enrico Fermi plant is easily spotted when flying into Detroit from the south. I took a trip to Detroit last March and then hunted through Google Maps to see the plant that I saw on the flight once I got home.
The huge costs associated with the Shoreham plant eventually brought down the electric company that built it, the Long Island Lighting Company, requiring a taxpayer-funded state takeover. It’s also a good part of the reason why electric rates on Long Island are among the highest in the country.
This is in Southern New Jersey Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Large, abandoned looking silo, anyone know info on this? Looks to be near a CoGen plant of some sort.
Thank you for this interesting information.
Tim,
If you are referring to the round object near the center of your posted link, that is a natural-draft hyperbolic cooling tower. Many people mistakenly believe that these are an absolute sign of a nuclear plant. However, many coal-fied (in this case) or other types of fossil-fuel plants utilize these also. They are simply the largest-capacity towers made, handling flows up to 500,000 gpm (that’s over 700 million gallons per day!) in some cases.
Doug
what’s this one?
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
41 48 07.75 N 81 08 31.84 W
That’s the Nuclear Power Plant by my house.