Before and After

Back when my silat teacher had the class in his shop in Longview, WA, I used to drive the scenic route, Oregon Highway 30, to get there.

Such trip took me right past the Trojan nuclear power plant, long since decommissioned. Sometimes I'd take the dogs to class, and the grounds of the plant proved to be a good stopping spot to walk them around a little, let them pee and sniff, like that.

They cranked it up in 1976, switched it off in 1992, even though they had a 30-year license. This due to a leak -- a week after PGE spent four-point-five million bucks to defeat a measure to force it to close. Spent the money, killed the ballot measure, then had to shut it down anyway. Irony.

For years, the cooling tower was visible from I-5 and long stretches of Hwy.30, but eventually, they took it down.

Week before they did it, I stopped and shot an image from my phonecam. Next week, a second picture from the same angle. Like it was never there ...