Sunday, May 21, 2006

At 7 a.m. PDT the 499-foot water cooling tower of the Trojan Nuclear Power plant was imploded using dynamite. The cooling tower, which is located in Rainier, Oregon, is the largest in the world to be demolished. For the past thirty years the tower has been an icon of the Pacific Northwest.

Controlled Demolition Incorporated, which was hired to bring down the tower, used approximately 3,300 sticks of dynamite. The company also imploded the King Dome in Seattle, Washington in 2000. Prior to the implosion, Interstate 5 and Highway 30 as well as river traffic on the Columbia River was blocked as a precaution.

The plant, which is owned by Portland General Electric, began operation in May 1976 and was shut down in January 1993 due to structural problems. It was decommissioned in 1999 when the reactor was taken upstream by barge to Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Some fuel rods are buried at the site, although they are in a casket over 900 feet from where the cooling tower sits.