Trojan Implosion I (backdated from July 19)

[nibot]

Trojan Nuclear Project. Evening prior to demolition.

You can really hit the ground running when you're flying West on the earliest flight of the day.

I could never sleep on airplanes before. I was too tall, the seats too small, and, unless I had a window to lean against, there was not even any stable position in which to sleep.

But somehow, flying enough, I'm over all that. Now airplanes are narcotic to me. I fall asleep before it's off the ground and don't wake up until we're taxiing to the arrival gate.

I left Rochester on the 6 AM flight to Chicago to Portland and pretty much didn't wake up until I was in my rental car, happily driving the West Coast streets in Portland, finding my way to something familiar. I saw a neat-looking place for brunch [Johnny B's], called wealhtheow and met her for breakfast, for strong coffee and huge pancakes, and there was sun streaming everywhere and Portland was exploding with flowers. It was wonderful.

After breakfast I went off on a mission, to see Mt. St. Helens. This, too, was very grand.

Now wealhtheow had told me about an event to occur, the demolition of Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, and by coincidence this was to occur at 07:00 AM the next morning. She planned to, with friends, sneek into the area before the road closures, camp for the night on the streets, and witness the event in the morning. There would be carrousing, there would be a night of revelry to celebrate the destruction of this strangely apocalyptic icon.

Well, all this seemed so fortuitous, it was not to be missed. I set my sights on Rainier, Oregon, on the Oregon-Washington border, on the Columbia river on its final bends before it reaches the sea.

There was no missing the huge form of the Cooling Tower. It rose from an island in the Columbia and was plainly visible, rising ominously beside Interstate Five between Portland and Seattle. I drove towards it on a suitable road. The road turned out to be closed with barricades and a crowd buzzed around the barricades, snapping photos of the tower in its last hours.

Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, it seems, had never been very popular, except as an icon for the rise and fall of nuclear power. Rumors persist that it inspired the plant in the Simpsons. The rise and fall of Nuclear Power seems to have played itself out with particular visibility in Oregon and Washington. At the Hanford Site, the Columbia Generating Station, a boiling water reactor, pumps a cloud of steam into the sky. I can only imagine the roar of that steam from the ground-level nozels from which it is emitted. The agency to build this plant was Washington Public Power Supply System. The project resulted in the largest municipal bond default in American history. WPPSS is now pronounced, "Woops!" On the Hanford campus, you can see plainly represented the aborted enthusiasm towards nuclear power: two completely unused, half-constructed clones of Columbia Generating Station rise from the desert floor. Check out the aerial imagery of the unfinished plant, abandoned in the desert. I drive by it on the way to work at LIGO.

Over the Lewis and Clark bridge I crossed the Columbia to the Oregon side, to highway 30, a two-lane that would take me to the plant itself. wealhtheow left a garbled voice mail: "There is an all-night, all-weekend party at the GOBLE TAVERN on HIGHWAY THIRTY at MILEPOST FORTY-ONE." But apparently her crew was having trouble getting out of Portland. I thought I might check out the tavern, get a burger, and then hit the road for LIGO, camping alone on the highway not sounding so appealing. I snapped the above photo from a spur of highway thirty.

Comments

[evan.livejournal.com]

Simpsons inspiration: highly likely, given that the creator was from the area (the characters' names are from Portland streets).