THE OFFICIAL WEBPAGE

OF ROBERT D. WEST

Trojan in Twilight

The final days of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant

The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in its final days, a week from the Cooling Tower's implosion.

The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant has been a northwest landmark since it was built in the 1970s. I had been intending to put up a page about it ever since writing the PLACES - Rainier, Oregon page about my hometown. Trojan had existed for my entire life, and when Portland General Electric announced in late 2005 that the plant would soon be demolished, I knew I had to work fast to create the page I simply had to have.

The photos on this page were taken on April 22, 2006 and May 13, 2006, except for the pictures taken the day of the cooling tower implosion: May 21, 2006. Most were taken with my digital camera, except for a few taken on film to take advantage of my Pentax Spotmatic's superior lens selection and responsiveness. This page is the first to primarily use pictures taken with my Canon PowerShot A520 digital camera.

My main sources of information included Portland General Electric's website, Wikipedia's article about the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, NukeWorker.com, The Virtual Nuclear Tourist, the Trojan Wetlands page, Howstuffworks.com, articles from The Daily News, The Clatskanie Chief, The Columbia County News/Advertiser, The Columbian, The Oregonian and The Statesman-Journal and special thanks to Tim Keller, a PGE employee who worked at Trojan for information about the site not available elsewhere. I would also like to thank Gene Davis, from whose property my dad and I watched the implosion of the cooling tower.

History of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant

In 1967, Portland General Electric selected the site for a new power plant in the state of Oregon. The 634-acre site was on the banks of the Columbia River in Columbia County, 42 miles north of Portland, between the small towns of Prescott and Goble, and 4 miles from the town of Rainier. Three miles away, on the Washington side of the river, was the town of Kalama.

This site held an ancient Native American burial ground and was noted by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as native fishing grounds as they sailed down the Columbia River. More recently, the site had been producing explosives: gun powder and dynamite for the Trojan Powder Works. This previous tenant would unknowingly lend its name to the to the new, modern facility that would rise here in its place: the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.

On February 1, 1970, construction began on Oregon's first, and only, nuclear power plant. By May of 1972, the plant's 499-foot cooling tower was complete. The height of the tower had been carefully selected; one foot taller, and the tower would have required red and white stripes painted on it.

Portland General Electric planned to bring the plant online in September 1974, but this was delayed by setbacks during construction. The 950-ton, 1,130-megawatt pressurized water reactor, the largest such reactor ever built at the time, first achieved criticality on December 15, 1975. The plant was connected to the power grid on December 23. Commercial operation began on May 20, 1976. The plant had a 35-year license, which would allow it to potentially remain in operation until 2011. At the time, Trojan made up a quarter of Oregon's power generation when operating at capacity. The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant cost $450 million to construct.

I could explain in detail how a nuclear power plant works, but Howstuffworks.com already did.

How Nuclear Power Plants Work at Howstuffworks.com

Of the 634 acres on which Trojan sat, Portland General Electric set aside 140 acres to be used as public recreation areas or remain as natural wetlands. The most significant of these is the 29-acre Recreation Lake, a man-made pond that is filled with water coming from Nice Creek on its way to empty into the Columbia River by way of Carr Slough. The Recreation Lake, which PGE stocks with fish and is frequented by ducks and geese, and the grounds surrounding it are maintained by PGE and kept open to the general public as the 75-acre Trojan Park. Just north of the Recreation Lake is the 26-acre Reflection Lake, another man-made pond, only unlike the Recreation Lake, which appears to have a natural shape, the Reflection Lake is perfectly rectangular. Trojan's Visitors Information Center was built on the edge of the Reflection Lake, and when viewed from the Visitors Information Center, the power plant was reflected in the waters of the lake. North of the Reflection Lake is a natural wetlands known as Shallow Lake, which is home to many wetland species including the Whistling Swan.

Click here for more about the Trojan Wetlands.

Area Map

Despite the fact that nuclear power plants generate far less pollution than coal or oil plants, and that the average person is exposed to more radiation from everyday sources than they would be from living near a nuclear power plant, Trojan was never popular with environmentalist groups, and a number of protests, led by Lloyd Marbet, were staged at the entrance to the site, often resulting in protestors being arrested. Trojan was closed for nine months in 1978, to correct errors made during construction, and to improve the plant's resistance to potential earthquakes caused by a previously unknown fault line. In 1979, the motion picture The China Syndrome was released, unrealistically depicting a fictional nuclear power plant suffering a reactor meltdown & releasing molten nuclear fuel into the earth. (TRIVIA: The control room of the power plant in The China Syndrome was actually based off of Trojan's control room, which the creators of the movie visited.) On March 28, 1979, 12 days after the release of The China Syndrome, the accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania occurred. Although the Three Mile Island incident actually proved that the fictional events depicted in The China Syndrome were impossible, the movie benefited from the news coverage of Three Mile Island. All of these factors led to Oregon voters approving a ban on the construction of new nuclear power plants in the state in 1980.

Click here to see the Nuclear Energy Institute's Critique of The China Syndrome.

Though Oregon's voters had decided they didn't want any new nuclear plants, the voters never closed Trojan. Attempts by Marbet and other environmental activists to close Trojan were defeated by the voters in 1986, 1990 and 1992. Portland General Electric spent over $5 million to defeat the 1992 ballot measure, still the most expensive ballot measure campaign in Oregon state history. On November 9, 1992, one week after the ballot measure was defeated in the general election, a steam generator tube leak forced Trojan to shut down. Portland General Electric determined that the cost to fully repair the plant was not economical in comparison to electricity generated from other sources (most, if not all, of Trojan's electricity was sold to markets in California; Oregon's own needs were being met mostly by hydroelectric dams) and announced on January 4, 1993 that Trojan would remain shut down permanently, and all nuclear fuel was removed from the reactor and placed in the spent fuel storage pool. After fighting hard to keep the plant open, PGE would willingly close it less than halfway through its anticipated lifespan. In May 1993, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission changed PGE's license for Trojan to a possession-only license, officially ending the plant's operation.

With Trojan closed for good, the economy of the surrounding area would suffer, especially in nearby Rainier. Not only was Rainier the home to many Trojan employees who would now be forced to find work elsewhere, but the city's police department, fire department and school district had been supported largely by the tax revenue from the plant. In the coming years, the police department would be reduced to buying used police cars, the fire department would combine with the fire department in nearby St. Helens to be able to replace aging equipment, and the school district would close three schools, consolidating entirely into the Hudson Park Elementary & Rainier High School built when Trojan first opened in the 1970s.

How long did Trojan operate?

Trojan operated for about 17 years. The exact length of Trojan's operation depends on what dates are used for the beginning and end of operation.

Possible Start Dates

December 15, 1975: Reactor achieves first criticality

May 20, 1976: Commercial operation begins

Possible End Dates

November 9, 1992: Plant shuts down

January 4, 1993: PGE announces plant will not restart

May 1993: License changed to possession-only

Depending on how you calculate it, the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant operated anywhere from about 16.5 years to 17.5 years. Commercial operation lasted about 16.5 years, while the reactor was in operation for just over a month short of 17 years. The plant's license for commercial operation was effective for almost exactly 17 years.

Trojan Decommissioning

As the local economy suffered, PGE moved forward in decommissioning Trojan. While waiting for the NRC to approve the complete decommissioning plan, PGE removed Trojan's four steam generators and pressurizer in November 1995. This was known as the Large Component Removal Project. The steam generators were each 14.5 feet in diameter and 68 feet long. The pressurizer was 8.5 feet in diameter and 53 feet long. These items were transported by barge up the Columbia River to the Department of Energy's low-level nuclear waste disposal facility at Hanford near Richland, Washington. In April 1996, the NRC approved PGE's complete decommissioning plan. The total cost of decommissioning Trojan was estimated at $429 million.

In August 1999, the reactor was removed from the Containment Building for transport to the Hanford low-level disposal facility near Richland. An early proposal suggested cutting the 950-ton reactor vessel, which measured 42 feet long and 17 feet in diameter, into smaller pieces to be transported by truck though Portland and down Interstate 84. This proposal was rejected in favor of transporting the reactor vessel intact by barge up the Columbia River. The reactor vessel was filled with concrete and covered in steel, bringing the total weight to 1,020 tons. It was loaded on the barge on Friday, August 6, and taken to Hanford over the weekend, where it was buried in a 45-foot-deep trench on August 11, where it remains today. This movement was known as the Reactor Vessel and Internals Removal (RVAIR) Project, and was awarded the International Project of the Year by the Project Management Institute in September 2000. Trojan's reactor was the largest commercial reactor ever decommissioned in the United States at the time.

Photos of the reactor vessel being moved can be found here. There are a few in here too.

When Trojan closed, a total of 781 spent fuel rod assemblies were in the spent fuel storage pool. Eventually, these highly radioactive fuel rods are to be moved to the future Federal Nuclear Waste Repository, which is expected to be established at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, these rods had to be removed from the spent fuel pool to complete decommissioning. To provide a secure place to store these rods, PGE built a thick concrete pad measuring 170' x 105' at the northeast corner of the Trojan site, about 900 feet north of the cooling tower, surrounded with two sets of barbed-wire fences, floodlights and full security monitoring. This is the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI), or dry cask storage facility. Beginning in December 2002, the spent fuel rods were removed from the spent fuel pool and loaded into welded stainless steel canisters. The canisters were then placed into one of 34 concrete casks with 29-inch thick walls, and moved to the ISFSI. Transfer of the spent fuel rods to the ISFSI was completed in September 2003.

By October 2004, PGE had completed the decommissioning plan and requested that the State of Oregon release the site for unrestricted use. The Final Site Survey was completed in December 2004, and a request for license termination was submitted to the NRC. In April 2005, the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council determined that the site met the criteria for unrestricted use, and on May 23, 2005, the NRC terminated Trojan's license, releasing the Trojan site for unrestricted use. Decommissioning was officially complete, and demolition of the power plant's buildings could begin. Demolition of the Turbine Building, Control Building, Auxiliary Building and Fuel Building, collectively known as the Power Block, began in March 2006 and will be completed in 2007. The 499-foot Cooling Tower was demolished by implosion at 7am on May 21, 2006, 30 years and one day after Trojan began commercial operation. It was the first cooling tower to be imploded in the United States and the largest yet imploded in the world. The dome-shaped Containment Building is scheduled for demolition in 2008.

Because of the ISFSI, the Trojan site is not completely free of nuclear material, and PGE will maintain a presence there for many years to come. The ISFSI operates under a separate license from the NRC. Because there is still no federal nuclear waste depository, the first shipment from the Trojan ISFSI is not expected until at least 2013, and full decommissioning of the ISFSI is not expected until 2024. PGE still maintains an electrical switching station at Trojan. This station has recently been expanded with an additional line to serve the new 400-megawatt power plant at Port Westward, about 15 miles from Trojan. In addition, although PGE's attempts to donate Trojan Park to the State of Oregon or Columbia County have failed, PGE continues to maintain the park and keep it open to the general public.

The Simpsons Connection

A side note about the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant is the widespread belief that it directly inspired the fictional Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Homer Simpson's place of employment on The Simpsons. This belief stems from the fact that Simpsons creator Matt Groening is a native of Portland, and many of the characters are named after streets in Portland (such as Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Mayor Quimby & Sideshow Bob Terwilliger) or other places in Oregon (like, say, Rainier Wolfcastle). Matt Groening has never confirmed this, and in 2006, as Trojan's cooling tower was being prepared for demolition, Groening's publicist made a statement that the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant was not based on any particular real power plant. Also, the Springfield power plant is depicted with two reactors and two cooling towers, where Trojan has only one of each. However, it is still possible that even if Trojan was not the basis for the Springfield plant, the fact that Trojan existed and was in the news around the time Groening created The Simpsons may have at least given Groening the idea.

Coincidentally, the date that the cooling tower was imploded, Sunday, May 21, 2006, was also the air date of the of the 17th season finale of The Simpsons. The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant had operated for about 17 years.

Views of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant

From the Kalama Sportsmen's Club Boat Launch

The closest a person can get to Trojan in the State of Washington is the boat launch of the Kalama Sportsmen's Club. This is also the best view of the Containment Building short of being on a boat. From here, you can clearly see the opening in the Containment Building through which the reactor vessel was removed in 1999 for transport to Hanford. You can also see the Fuel Building and the back side of the Turbine Building, both under demolition. And, of course, there's the Cooling Tower, waiting out its days.

The panorama from this spot is impressive.

From here there is also a view of the dock south of the cooling tower. When the reactor was removed from the plant it was loaded onto the barge at this dock on August 6, 1999. There is also a small rocky island with a beacon on it to warn ships about Coffin Rock, which juts out into the Columbia River just south of the power plant.

From Graham Road at U.S. Highway 30

Graham Road is the only road into the town of Prescott. Where Graham Road starts, at U.S. Highway 30, there is a small place to park where one can view the power plant from across Shallow Lake. While you can't quite see the dome of the Containment Building from here, you can see the back of the Administration Building.

Along U.S. Highway 30

Heading south from Graham Road on Highway 30, the rest of the power plant site comes into view. This would be a great viewpoint if it wasn't for the traffic of the highway being literally a few feet away. Not much shoulder on the highway here. Great panorama though.

There is spot to pull off the highway close to this spot, where an informational sign explains about the Whistling Swans, for whom these wetlands are a winter habitat, though when I took these pictures, the swans had already migrated north for the summer.

THE WHISTLING SWAN
 

     These are the common native swan of North America. Their nesting grounds are on lowland lakes along the arctic coasts of Alaska and Canada. In early autumn they migrate south to both U.S. coasts to spend the winter in a warmer climate. These large white birds are found in this area from November to March.

     Except for the rare Trumpeter, the Whistling Swan is the largest wild fowl in Oregon. It has a wing spread of approximately 7 ft. and a weight of 12 to 19 lbs.

     In Oregon they are provided complete year around protection, and hunting them is not permitted.

Trojan Artwork

An interesting side note about Trojan is the mural at the Triangle Mall in Longview, Washington. The Triangle Mall opened in 1964 as a cluster of several large stores, each in its own separate building. One of these stores was a Pay 'N Save drug store. Some years later, the mall's anchor stores were connected by smaller stores, the walkways between them were covered and the ends enclosed, making the Triangle Mall like a typical mall. In 2003, most of the Triangle Mall was demolished to be reconfigured as a strip-mall-like grouping of stores. The stand-alone Pay 'N Save building, now a Rite Aid, was the only part of the original mall left standing. The demolition revealed some old Pay 'N Save signage on the west wall, including a hand-painted mural depicting the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.

This mural cannot be original to the mall, as the mall predates the construction of Trojan be several years. It seems this was added around the time of Trojan's construction. There are a couple of interesting aspects to this mural. First, although the mural was placed in Washington, it depicts the plant as viewed from along U.S. Highway 30 in Oregon instead of as viewed from Kalama, Washington as might be expected. Second, some parts of the mural are quite accurate, such as the locations of the lights on the Cooling Tower, and the general layout of windows on the Turbine Building, while other parts, like the windows depicted in the dome of the Containment Building, are significant errors. There is also a construction crane in the background, and the Administration Building is conspicuously absent, suggesting this painting was made while the plant was still under construction in the early 1970s.

The mural remained in place through late 2005, but by 2006 RiteAid had renovated that side of the building to install a drive-up window and generally "update" the exterior, and the Pay 'N Save signage, including the Trojan mural, were no longer visible. I don't know if the mural is still in place behind the new exterior, or if it was removed and taken somewhere else. Either way, it managed to remain in place almost as long as the real Trojan.

Tour of the Trojan Grounds

Trojan Site Map

Main Entrance

At the main entrance to the Trojan site stands this sign. This is not the original sign from when the plant was operational, which declared this the "Trojan Nuclear Power Plant" (though it does stand on the original pedestal). Now, it is simply the "Trojan Project" and Trojan Park is listed separately. This sign was intended to list the names of all the tenants PGE hoped to lure into the vacated office buildings after the plant closed. The only other name visible on this sign, on the BACK of one of the spaces, is Barrett Robotic Welding Services, a contractor that sealed up the generators during the plant's decommissioning. Note that the address of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant is 71760 Columbia River Highway, Rainier, Oregon 97048.

I found this picture of the original sign on this page.

This temporary sign was put up at the entrance to the site to announce that the site would be completely closed for several days for the implosion of the Cooling Tower.

Here is the view of the Cooling Tower from the Main Entrance to the Trojan Site.

Visitors Information Center

This gate keeps cars from entering the parking lot of the Visitors Information Center. It doesn't do much to keep pedestrians out though. I saw kids riding bikes in the parking lot. I'm not really sure why PGE wants to keep cars out of here either. It's just a parking lot.

This grassy area is where the Visitors Information Center once stood. The 15,000 square foot building once explained the operation of the power plant and electricity in general, as well as containing Native American artifacts discovered here before the plant was built. The Visitor's Information Center closed after the plant officially shut down for good in 1993. Though PGE initially tried to find other uses for the building (at least one Rainier High School dance was held in the building), the building was damaged by flooding due to heavy rain in 1996, and remained vacant from then on. The Visitors Information Center building was demolished in the summer of 2004. In May 2004, shortly before beginning demolition, PGE allowed Columbia River Fire & Rescue to use the building for a number of training drills. Today, there is nothing left of the actual building, though it is surrounded by hints that there was something here.

Nukeworker.com has a photo of the back of the Visitors Information Center here.

Reflection Lake

The Visitors Information Center sat on the edge of the 26-acre rectangular Reflection Lake. Here is the view of the power plant from where the Visitors Information Center was. The panorama of the Reflection Lake is quite nice.

Visitor Viewing Platform

Adjacent to the Visitors Information Center site is this large concrete patio, from which the view across the Reflection Lake could be taken in. It is largely intact, and seems strange to still be present with the adjacent building gone.

This gate is located at the back of the Visitors Information Center parking lot at the far end of the viewing platform. It leads to a trail at least partly around the Reflection Lake, though how much of the trail is still passable is a mystery I didn't care to find the answer to.

Heliport

A grassy field of a heliport remains near the Visitors Information Center parking lot. The original 1970s signage still remains in place.

Visitors Information Center Parking Lot

The parking lot for the Visitors Information Center, having been pretty much abandoned since 1993, is still largely intact. 1970s-era directional signs still point the way for non-existent visitors to a non-existent visitors center for a soon-to-be-non-existent nuclear power plant, though moss is slowly covering them over.

Trojan used a number of unusual, and possibly unique, light fixtures outside the buildings, and the abandoned Visitors Information Center parking lot showcases several of them. The dome-shape seems to be the common theme, probably mimicking the shape of the Containment Building which held the nuclear reactor. First are the concrete bollards/lights. At the bus parking area, concrete parking lot lights alternate with plain concrete bollards. The concrete lights also lined the perimeter of the parking lot. The low, metal light was used at islands in the parking lot and on the viewing platform. The taller metal light was used at corners of islands. A few of the metal lights have been decapitated by vandals. One still has the remains of a light bulb in place!

Spotlights

Near the site of the Visitors Information Center is this concrete pad that once held three upward-facing spotlights, though only one remains. I believe these spotlights originally illuminated three flags on flagpoles once mounted here. Naturally, two of the flags would have been the American flag and the Oregon flag. But was the third a PGE flag, a unique Trojan flag, or something else?

Driveway

Here is a look down the road toward the Cooling Tower. Notice the waterfowl along the side of the road.

Trojan Park Recreation Lake

Trojan Park's 29-acre Recreation Lake is a popular gathering place for domesticated geese and ducks. Some of them are very domesticated, and don't even flinch around people. In fact they seem to expect to be fed. They didn't even seem to mind the kids in the little toy car.

When I took these pictures, Trojan Park was not officially open yet. The park does not technically open until Memorial Day, and the park's parking lot was gated off with a sign that made that perfectly clear. But, that doesn't stop people from parking wherever they can to enjoy PGE's beautiful park, whether its open or not. Here's a panorama of the Reflecting Lake from the other direction. The building on the right edge is the next stop on the tour.

Training Building

There are two sides to the Training Building that could be considered the front. This is the first one, the south side, and is really the more obvious one. The Training Building is not an original Trojan building; it was built in the late 1980s. Its original function should be obvious from the name. It didn't get to serve in its intended service for very long before the plant closed down, though it did get some further use by Concordia University for some outreach courses. There is a large parking lot on the east side of the Training Building.

Here is the east side of the Training Building, and while it may not have technically been the front of the building, the doors on this side probably got the most use. Even though this building was added later, the lights along the sidewalk carry on the dome-shaped theme from elsewhere on the site. Notice that the Training Building actually wraps around a courtyard, which is accessible from the east side, though the canopy almost makes it possible to not even notice the courtyard.

Inside the courtyard. The trees seem to be doing well on their own. The Cooling Tower is reflected in the glass of the Training Building, and as seen directly from inside the courtyard. Incidentally, that last picture is the 2000th picture taken with my digital camera.

The Training Building even featured uniquely decorated trash cans, and they are still in place in 2006. I really like the larger one, though the small one has a charm all its own as well.

As the view through the windows shows, the Training Building has most recently become a warehouse for paperwork. Boxes and boxes on pallets fill the lobby atrium, many of them covered in plastic, apparently anticipating a long stay. More boxes line the hallways.

Here is a close-up of the of the Training Building's more modern version of the tall, dome-shaped sidewalk lamp. Notice that unlike those at the Visitors Information Center, these give off light in all directions.

This newspaper box indicates that the Training Building used to get The New Rainier Review delivered. It was a free weekly paper, but it had some good local news. Long ago, Rainier used to have a newspaper called the Rainier Review, and The New Rainier Review was a 1990s attempt to resurrect it. The Longview Daily News bought out The New Rainier Review and renamed it the Columbia County Review in 1997 or 1998 in an attempt to expand it and replace their Neighbors paper, which was just a rehash of one of the regular Daily News' "This Day" sections from the week, with the week's ads thrown in. Finding actual news for the Columbia County Review must have been too much work, as it reverted back to the Neighbors fairly quickly. I used to deliver the Neighbors, and liked delivering it when it became the Columbia County Review a lot better. It felt more like a real newspaper.

Training Building Parking Lot

These old Army surplus trucks were found in the Training Building parking lot a week before the Cooling Tower implosion. They weren't there a few weeks earlier. They are owned by International Line Builders, Inc., and look like they've seen a lot of duty in their many years.

Trojan Park Entrance

Here is the Cooling Tower from the official entrance to Trojan Park, that leads to the park's parking lot. I particularly like the view of the tower peeking through the trees.

Main Gate

This is the main gate leading into the actual power plant area. The railroad tracks in front of the gate are the Portland & Western Railroad's line from Portland to Astoria. That is not just a spur; it is a main track cutting through the Trojan property. This route was originally built by the Astoria & Columbia River Railroad, opening for service in 1898. The sign warning vehicles not to block the tracks while waiting for the gate to open is amusing, as it shows an old steam locomotive colliding with a 1980s-era truck, and both images look like computer clip-art. There are two guard houses; one at the gate, and one a little further up the road.

Before we look at the actual power plant though, there's one more important building outside the gate.

Administration Building

At the north end of the Trojan site is PGE's old Administration Building. While Trojan was still in operation, this large building was full of offices for Trojan employees. When the plant closed in 1993, the building was vacated. Undoubtedly a building PGE would have liked to lease out to tenants, the building's main use since has been to store papers during Enron's ownership of PGE.

Here is the view of the power plant from outside the main entrance of the Administration Building. The Administration Building's parking lot has been somewhat torn up to make room for the enlarged switching station.

Administration Building Parking Lot

Walking across what remains of the Administration Building's parking lot, there are a couple of things to notice. One is this railroad spur. Though it currently stops at the edge of the parking lot, the path it cut through it is still clearly visible, and the extra rails are still on site. This spur out into the parking lot was added around 1998, when radioactive concrete was being removed from the Containment Building. This concrete was loaded into railroad cars and shipped to a facility in Tennessee, where it could be properly processed.

Another item of note in the Administration Building Parking Lot is the pole-mounted parking lot lights. As of 2006, there are only three of these lights remaining, though there used to be quite a few more. The rest were removed when the fence around the switching station was expanded into the parking lot. These may be unique Trojan lights, used only at the Administration Building. They cannot be found anywhere else on the Trojan site. They continue the dome-shaped theme of other lights on the site. Also around the Administration Building are some of the tall metal lights like those used around the Training Building and the Visitors Information Center parking lot.

Security Entrance

Near the Switching Station, between the Main Gate and the Administration Building, a staircase leads up the slope to the fence around the actual power plant. From the top of this staircase, one can get a good view of the Switching Station, which will soon serve the new power plant under construction at Port Westward. The panorama of the Trojan site from here is also quite impressive.

The staircase itself leads to this Security Building, the main entrance to the secure areas of the former nuclear power plant. Each of the five doors bears a sign that makes it perfectly clear what is required.

The landing outside the Security Entrance gave a great view of the cooling tower. Even the base of tower could be glimpsed from here.

Trojan Central

Beyond the Security Entrance lies this building, called Trojan Central. Trojan Central is not an original Trojan building; it, like the Training Building, was added in the late 1980s. After the plant closed in 1993, operations were consolidated in Trojan Central, allowing the Administration Building to be vacated, probably in the hopes that it could be leased out to some other tenant. Trojan Central remained occupied until 2005, when the plant's decommissioning was completed. Notice that the light fixtures at Trojan Central do not carry on the dome-shaped theme found outside the fence.

Turbine Building

The Turbine Building's purpose should be fairly obvious from its name. From just about any angle, the dome of the Containment Building can be seen above it. The Turbine Building, along with the Control Building, Auxiliary Building and Fuel Building, made up the Power Block. Along with the Containment Building, the Power Block was the power plant. Demolition of the Power Block began in March of 2006, and can be seen progressing in the pictures below. The first row of pictures was taken on April 22, 2006. The second row was taken on May 13, 2006. In that two weeks, most of the outer siding and insulation was removed from the Turbine Building. Behind the Turbine Building, the Control Building and Fuel Buildings can be glimpsed, also under demolition.

The demolition of the Power Block is scheduled to be completed in 2007, leaving the Containment Building standing alone until its demolition in 2008.

Cooling Tower

The most dominant feature by far on the Trojan site was the cooling tower. For some reason, many people don't understand the function of a cooling tower, and some even think that the tower is the power plant itself, so I will try to give an explanation of what a cooling tower is and what it does.

Most power plants, including those that burn coal, oil and natural gas as well as nuclear plants, simply heat water to produce steam which is used to turn a steam turbine connected to a generator. This steam is then cooled in condensers back into water to be reheated. The condenser itself is cooled by water from a separate supply, which in turn is cooled in a cooling tower and cycled back through the condenser. In some cases, these cooling towers are largely mechanical in nature, which keeps the size down in relation to the rest of the power plant, but requires more electricity. The other option is to use a much larger natural draft cooling tower. While the general public most often associates these towers with nuclear power plants, they can be found in other applications, including power plants using other fuels, and some nuclear plants use mechanical draft cooling towers instead of natural draft.

Trojan used a 499-foot hyperbolic natural draft cooling tower to cool the water for the condensers. A natural draft cooling tower operates entirely on the basic principle that air rises as it heats up. Though a natural draft cooling tower is by far the most visually impressive component of a nuclear power plant, because there is two completely separate systems between the nuclear reactor in the Containment Building and the cooling water of the condensers, the cooling tower is never exposed to any nuclear radiation or radioactive material.

The Virtual Nuclear Tourist has a good general explanation of Cooling Towers.

For more information on how a nuclear power plant generates electricity, Click Here.

Trojan's cooling tower was built over the top of a water basin with a capacity of 5 million gallons. The bottom of the tower is open, to allow cool air off the Columbia River to enter the tower. Inside the tower, hot water (about 112 degrees) from the condensers was sprayed from nozzles onto cooling fins. As the drops of water dripped off these fins, the heat from the water was transferred to the cool incoming air, cooling the water to about 75 degrees. As the cooled water collected in the basin, the air rose, picking up speed as it absorbed more heat. By the time the warm air exited the top of the tower it was moving upwards at about 10 miles per hour. This air movement sucked more cool air in at the bottom of the tower, continuing the process (natural draft). Not all the water from the condensers was reclaimed in the cooling process. About 11,000 gallons of water was lost to evaporation per minute, joining with the rising hot air as water vapor to form the cloud-like plume seen coming from the top of the tower when the plant was operating. Water from the Columbia River was taken in to make up for the water lost to evaporation.

Trojan's cooling tower was completed in May 1972, and consisted of 41,000 tons of concrete and steel. The tower's hyperbolic shape was designed to provide structural strength and speed vertical airflow. The diameter at the base measured 385 feet and the walls were 45 inches thick. At the top of the 499-foot height, the diameter was 250 feet, and the walls were 18 inches thick. At the tower's narrowest point, about 2/3 of the way up, the diameter was 232 feet and the walls were 10 inches thick.

The cooling tower was 499 feet tall; if it were any taller, it would have had to be painted with red & white stripes. As it was, the tower had to have a number of lights in place. Red lights were placed at the top of the tower and at 3 other elevations spaced equally up the side of the tower. At each elevation, a light faced in each direction.  Starting at the bottom, the red lights at the first and third row were on constantly. The red lights on the other two levels (the middle of the tower and the top) oscillated on and off, all at the same time, at a period of about every three seconds. Additionally, white strobes were also mounted at the top of the tower, halfway between the red lights around the perimeter. The white strobes flashed about 40 times a minute, though they did not seem to be synchronized with the red lights in any way.

The cooling tower would have been the tallest building in Oregon when completed in May 1972, however Portland's 546-foot First National Bank Tower (now Wells Fargo Center) was completed the same month. Since then, Portland's 536-foot U.S. Bancorp Tower and 509-foot KOIN Center have also topped the cooling tower's height. The following table shows how Trojan's cooling tower compared to other tall structures locally and around the world.