Giant Marshmallows/Ear Plugs

If anyone lives near a Boiling Water Reactor nuclear power plant, you probably recognize this pretty easily. It is a picture of a cooling tower and this one happens to be at the Satsop Business Complex in Elma, Washington.

Now, I have 2 reasons for being in this area and snapping this picture on Saturday. First, my husband and I are both old nuclear power techs, so passing by on the freeway year in and year out, I just wanted to see what was up on the hill.

Second reason was the grands are always asking what those giant marshmallows are for or as the oldes one calls them, giant ear plugs. So, we had time to kill before the race on Saturday and I decided to detour to take a look.

This plant went up but was heavily protested and never opened. Please, I am very educated about nuclear power, I understand Chernobyl & Japan, so don't turn this blog into your personl anti-nuclear bandstand.

What appalls me is that the millions of dollars spent to build this facility and then it never opened. I say make the decision before you start building. Knowing how the power grid works, it saddened me to see these huge towers and power yard all up and never was the grid hooked up so all that is rusted and wasting away. All that money just wasted!

They tell me there is a gas plant of some sort up in the area, but I didn't see anything. I saw a small cafe, a rusted out car and a wood manufacturer of some sort. What was odd was I must still be in that working mode, because the closer we got to the plant, the more I expected someone to stop us from getting any closer, but that never happened.

This gate should have told me that: This is on the right side of the roadway driving away from the plant about a mile or more down the road. There is another portion on the left side and I believe this would have probably been the security gate had this plant been completed.

If not, I can't think of any other reason to build a gate across a roadway like this. The kids enjoyed the ride and after living here for over 4 years, I finally can say, I drove up, looked around and came home.

The one thing I never get enough of living in this area is the shear beauty and magnitude of the trees and nature. I had seen a deer in this area, however, but the time I pulled over to take a picture, it had fled!

I can now cross this off my list of places to see in our area and in the state. My curiosity has been met and satisfied.

I do know they have office buildings in the area, so if you know a company that is looking to move into the state of Washington, you might tell them about Satsop. The proximity to the freeway, the capital city of Olympia and rivers is just amazing.