AeroNW
Captain
Flight distance : 232844 ft
United States
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This site is not really "city", but it doesn't fit "nature" very well either, though it is sited in a mostly rural part of western Washington about a half hour drive from where I live.
In the 1970s, Satsop was part of one of the most ambitious nuclear power plant construction projects in the U.S., at least until the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, or as some say “Whoops”), defaulted on 2.25 billion dollars in bonds. The project was plagued with cost overruns, and construction stopped in early 1982 leaving the plant unfinished but more than half complete, with monstrous cooling towers and mostly-complete reactor containment domes. The much-publicized Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 didn’t help public relations efforts either. As the decade drew to a close, the project was mired in lawsuits that would last for years. To shed its bad image, WPPSS changed its name to Energy Northwest in 1998.
The plant, which had been built to withstand a massive earthquake, was left standing. Seeing the potential of the unfinished site, area leaders formed the Grays Harbor Public Development Authority to transition the plant into a business park. In 2013, it handed over ownership to the Port of Grays Harbor, which now manages the community-owned facility. Reuse has brought an eclectic mix of business and activity to the campus, ranging from a world-class acoustical lab to film shoots to an impressive construction and tunnel training site used by the City of Seattle Fire Department, and military and police training programs. Chain link fences surround some of the more "attractive nuisance" freatures of the site but otherwise it is freely accessible to the public.
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