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Trojan
This morning CDI (Controlled Demolition, INC) blew up the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Tower. The Tower took 2 years to build and cost more than $10 million.

Its concrete and steel weigh as much as an aircraft carrier, and its crown of strobe lights, 499 feet up, has been a landmark for generations of drivers passing by on Interstate 5.

This morning, it came down in about 5 seconds. The implosion happened right on time, at 7 a.m.

A ton and a half of explosives were plugged into 3,250 holes and connected by a lattice of yellow blasting cord, making the dirt-gray tower look as if it's covered by a tattered lace doily. The tower crumpled like an aluminum can.

For friends and foes of Oregon's only nuclear-power plant, the rumble and dust will symbolize the Northwest's failed nuclear experiment. Trojan was once billed as the model for 20 nuclear plants to be built in the Northwest. The financial collapse of Washington's nuclear-plant builder — famously known as "Whoops" — ended all that; just one working plant, at Richland, is left. Two partially finished plants at Satsop are now part of a business park.

Trojan went online in 1976 and in its heyday cranked out enough power to light Portland. It held sway over the region's imagination and was an inspiration for the Springfield plant in Portland native Matt Groening's TV series, "The Simpsons."








I am pretty bummed about this. To understand why, you have to know that, as a child, my parents drove me past Trojan every other weekend on highway 30 to the coast, for twelve years of my life. Trojan ceased being a working nuclear power plant in the late eighties/early nineties, but prior to that, my gradeschool science class took a field trip there. We learned about how it worked and toured the plant. Several times since it was shut down, I've taken out of state visitors (Kyle, you remember this!) to see the massive structure that looms over the Oregon side of the Columbia river. Many have said they will miss the tower, especially since it provided a landmark that rivergoers used as well. I am sure that everyone who was raised here was watching the news along with me as the tower came down this morning in a cloud of smoke.