I’m Going Nuclear - You Better Stand Back!!!
Well I fell off the grid for a while, thanks to a powerful cold, which I’m still getting over. I loved the title idea, hoping to draw viewers to check out a few photos I took of an incomplete Nuclear Power Plant just outside of Elma, Washington.
I’ve taken a lot of trips to the far west side of Washington, and during each trip, I would see the two enormous towers of a nuclear power plant perched on the top of distant hill. Coming back on one of those trips, I searched for a road that would take me to them.
Panoramic View - 10 Shots Taken
Link to all the Full Size JPEGs on Flickr
The thought of visiting a nuclear power plant doesn’t rate really high on most people’s lists for places to see, because it didn’t for me either. None the less, I did want to say that I did see one once up close, to see the architecture and the enormous size of a concrete. Thankfully this plant isn’t in operation, so you can actually get really close to the towers too.
Very little was built for this tower
I ended up having to take two trips to this location, because the first time I visited, the low clouds weren’t letting up, which halted me of taking a few good full shots of the tower. Thankfully on the first visit, there was a non profit event happening in the right tower, which is completely hollow. The tower is normally closed to the public, but that day I was able to check it out up close.
Clouds inside the right tower
I never got a clean shot of the tower, because of the clouds and the limitations of my lens on the camera. The coolest part about standing inside this hollow tower, is the amazing echo. I tried having a normal conversation with others in the tower, but the echos became so loud, that it was difficult to hear the other person, halting the conversation all together.
Stairway to Heaven
Looking up at the outside of the tower, like the stairway above, made you tired just thinking about how tiring it would be climbing all those stairs. In the photo above, less than half the stairs are showing.
Imagine working on that tower, having to climb to the top to check on equipment. You make it to the top when you realize you left your needed keys on the bottom floor. I hate it when that happens.
Left Tower, 75% to Completion
Checking out the far left tower, I had to perch myself over a fence to get the shot above. This bad boy wasn’t hollow. One thing that was interesting walking between the two towers is finding spots in the field where they were going to build something, and you had to figure out what it was for. Since I’m neither a scientist or an engineer, my ideas were far fetched and I don’t plan on sharing them in the article. But for all those “know-it-alls” out there, you may have fun checking this site out.
Satsop Tower 3 and 5 - History
I didn’t try to unravel the history behind the production of this nuclear power plant, because I know the billions of tax dollars Americans paid for it were wasted. A sad story really, but I’m sure if you dig deeper in government, you can find many others. Here is a list of 63 different nuclear power plant projects that were being built and canceled. Thankfully the chart that Wikipedia provides doesn’t show the invested totals of each one.
The Road to Nuclear
Besides my very first attempt of creating a panoramic photo pictured at the beginning of the article, the photo above is my favorite shot. During my two trips to the site, I did capture a few photos that didn’t pertain to the nuclear power plant. In the slide show below, you can see a few photos taken in the city of Elma. A couple shots of spider webs, a railroad track bridge and a small blue house in the distance also caught my eye.
If you like any of the photos and would like to download a copy of the original size, click the Flickr link provided at the top of this article.
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