What Might Have Been

This is not as bad as the story of Bellefonte, because this development didn't get anywhere near complete. As part of TVA's aggressive nuclear development program, this would have been a four unit plant, each unit good for about 1200 Megawatts, from what sketchy information is still available. I (Pat) seem to recall that this was to be a Boiling Water plant as opposed to a Pressurized Water plant, but see previous comments about my memory. Anyway, it's a moot point, because this cooling tower seems to be the only structure that got completed.

TVA now just maintains most of the site for storage and training. But, if you believe the local conspiracy theorists, all sorts of "black ops" are going on here. Why, there has even been a bigfoot sighting nearby! Supposedly there was an "Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon Test" here that knocked the local AM radio station off the air, and fried the telephones at the local newspaper, violating their first amendment rights... Give us a break! The bigfoot sighting pretty much establishes the caliber of this crap, which is why we decline to provide any links to the garbage. If you are interested in this tripe, just do a search on "Hartsville", but please don't share your findings with us... we are not interested!

The real story here is how much coal would not have been burned to produce the 4800 plus Megawatts this plant would have been good for. Its not visible in the picture above, but behind the buildings is what would have been a 500KV transmission tower, without any wires. We saw more of this "line" when coming back to Edgar Evins State Park from Nashville on I-40. That's when it sinks in what we have lost.

Here Jan surveys the not pretty scene.

Visible behind the fence to the right of the cooling tower is what would have been two of the containment buildings. The plant was actually going to be configured as two 2 unit plants located right next to each other.

A thoroughly depressing visit...