Columbia Generating Station
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The Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power station, is a uranium-fueled General Electric boiling water reactor located on the United States Department of Energy Hanford Site, 12 miles (19 km) NW of Richland, Washington, USA. Its site covers 1,089 acres (4.4 km²) of Benton County, Washington.
This plant is owned and operated by Energy Northwest, a consortium of Pacific Northwest public utilities. Energy Northwest's original name was the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS), derisively known as "whoops" when WPPSS became responsible for the largest municipal bond default in US history. Construction delays and cost over-runs for this reactor drew considerable public and media attention. Construction began in 1972, but more than a decade passed before it began generating power.
In the year 2000, WPPSS changed its name to Energy Northwest, and later the plant's name was changed from WNP-2 (Washington Nuclear Power unit number 2) to Columbia Generating Station, presumably in an attempt to distance both the owners and the plant from the past. Of the five commercial reactors originally planned by WPPSS for the State of Washington, this reactor was the only one completed.
With its troubled history behind it, however, the reactor has performed very well. The plant provides Washington with 9% of the state's electrical generation capacity. It is the only commercial nuclear power reactor in the Pacific Northwest. The nearest reactor is the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in southern California.
The plant's only reactor is a General Electric Type 5. The plant had a new Westinghouse Electric (1998) generator turbine installed in 1999, which brought its output rating to 1250 MWe.
The Columbia Generating Station hosts of a number of buildings, the most prominent of which is the 220-foot tall reactor containment building. It can be easily identified and distinguished from other buildings on the Hanford Site by its likeness to a giant box.
The Columbia Generating Station features six low-profile cooling towers, in which cool water from the Columbia River absorbs heat from warm water circulated from the reactor. The warm, non-radioactive river water then is blown up into the atmosphere to evaporate. Some water droplets fall back to earth, creating spectacular hoar frost in the winter. At times the vapor cloud from the cooling towers can reach 10,000 feet in height and can be seen at a great distance, perhaps 100 miles.
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