Elma, Washington: Satsop Abandoned Nuclear Plant

They're all fenced in now. You can purchase a tour at the main office from May to September.

What a contrast -- nature vs. nuclear power plant. So glad this was never completed. Interesting that it is being used as a business park. You can freely drive around it; fencing and no trespassing signs prevent you from getting into the unfinished reactors.

I revisited these towers because of the uniqueness of the photos that can be taken at them.

As I mentioned on your site a couple years ago, one of the towers is fenced in with a business. The business is a training facility, which at times is training workers to build a new Seattle road tunnel -- there is a huge tunnel drill outside the fence. During the week, it's simple for someone to just walk though the open gate and walk around the tower. The other tower is still fenced in completely.

One tower is accessible. One of them often has the fence open during the day for workers. The other is surrounded by a fence.

The Satsop Nuclear Power Plant was 75% complete in 1983 before the money ran out and work was abandoned. To avoid steep dismantling costs, the site was eventually handed over to a public corporation and became the Satsop Development Park, home to various light industry businesses who work in the shadows of the two cooling towers. You can enter the property freely but you can't go under the towers (they're fenced off, although supposedly they are planning to open them to the public someday). Still, you can peek inside them since their bases are not solid (the hollow structures are held aloft by a zigzag of beams.) The tower at the site entrance was completely empty inside save for a lone port-a-potty.