Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marble Hill Nuclear Power Station is located at 38°36'3.09"N 85°26'45.19"W near New Washington Indiana. It was first proposed in 1973 by Public Service of Indiana and was finally closed due to overwhelming expenditures.

A view of Marble Hill Nuclear Power Station

Unit 1 Turbine building in 1988

1 History
2 Description
3 Current status
4 References

[edit] History

Construction began in 1977 and was halted in 1984 with Unit #1 approx. 80% complete and Unit#2 40% complete. A proposal in June 1984 to complete the project was made by three of the major construction contractors: the Bechtel Power Corporation, Sargent & Lundy and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. This plan was rejected because it required Public Service Indiana to continue to find financing for the $7.1 billion project.

Two "sister" plants were constructed, Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station and Byron Nuclear Generating Station, both in Illinois. Braidwood serves the Chicago area. As a point of comparison, the Braidwood facility took 12 years to build at a final cost of $5.2 billion.

[edit] Description

The two signature containment buildings which would have housed Westinghouse pressurized water reactors still stand as well as the two cooling tower complexes located just north of the containment buildings. The lower portion of the reactor vessel in Unit #1 was already installed at the time construction was halted. The turbine building behind the containment buildings has been demolished, although the multi-story concrete turbine foundations still stand with what remains of the Unit#1 turbine still in place.

[edit] Current status

A more Current view of the Reactor complex, notice that the turbine building behind the containment buildings has been demolished. Photo Taken by Bryan Napier 2007

Marble Hill is currently owned by an undisclosed company based in Michigan and has been under demolition with a contract from MCM Management Corp. Currently, the buildings that are not fully demolished are the two containment buildings, the fuel processing building, the auxiliary building, the cooling stations, the 'ultimate heat sink' and the downhill freshwater pipeline with pump station.