On Sunday at 7am, the ol' eyesore cooling-tower at the Trojan "noo-cue-ler" (as Dubya says) power plant along the Columbia River is being brought down.
Demolition crews are busy getting ready for the big day having nearly completed the task of mining the tower with explosives. More than 3,300 holes have been drilled into the concrete, holes that have been, or will be, filled with a nitroglycerin-based dynamite.
Doug Loizeaux with Controlled Demolition, Inc., is the man in charge of the project.
"Cooling towers have been taken down all over the world," he says. "But this is the largest one that's ever been taken down and it's the only one that has a double reinforcing mat."
The walls were built extra thick so they could withstand an earthquake and it will take 2,500 pounds of explosives to bring them down. The dynamite is being placed in two horizontal layers, one at 100 feet up and the other at 250 feet up. They are connected by several vertical lines of explosives and when they go off, the tower will be knocked off balance by a few degrees.
The tower will come almost straight down, 150 feet off center, and far away from the radioactive spent fuel rods that are still stored at the site.
The entire demolition is expected to take just 14 seconds.
Interstate 5 and Highway 30 will be shut down immediately before and after the demolition.
1 comment:
bill eagle is right but it was still way cool
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