Long Island's decommissioned nuclear power plant
74 points
by mkmk
6 days ago
| 8 comments
| nickcarr.com
| HN
stevenhubertron
17 minutes ago
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I grew up there. I was maybe 14 so I have some memory of how worked up the community was. I remember people talking about building a bridge to CT since there would be no other way to get people off the island. It was such a fierce time then, nothing compared to nowadays about seemingly anything though.
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HansHamster
2 hours ago
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Interesting. You can see the building from the beach and I always wondered what's inside. And while it's the only (decommissioned) nuclear power plant on Long Island, it's not the only nuclear reactor. There was also the High Flux Beam Reactor at BNL that was decommissioned in the 90s:

https://www.bnl.gov/hfbr/

https://www.bnl.gov/hfbr/hfbr-complex.php

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hgoel
1 hour ago
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Oh, so that's what that building was!
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natnat
25 minutes ago
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What a depressing outcome. This could have powered hundreds of thousands of households, cheaply, without adding any CO2 to the atmosphere.
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ozmaverick72
54 minutes ago
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Has the site also been decommissioned - or just hugged - none of the images are loading for me at the moment
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ozmaverick72
39 minutes ago
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All good its working for me now
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epistasis
3 hours ago
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I think the control panels are as compelling as the big industrial rooms. Fantastic pictures!
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wsor4035
1 hour ago
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if you want to see a video (9 years ago) from inside the plant, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONEm1ph3MP4 - the top comment is also interesting
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vlian2088
2 hours ago
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why wasn't it scrapped? it's not like all that steel is irradiated.
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epistasis
2 hours ago
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Probably not economical to do that... Parts that could be sold, like 2/3 of the turbines, apparently were!

As for the parts of the steel that do get irradiated, anybody interested in seeing a flame cutter going to town to Blue Oyster Cult? I think so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Jt8EMF5Lg

I'd love to see some videos of robotic diamond wire cutters on the biological shield concrete, but haven't found any of those.

Edit: found one! From Sweden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc5jdvc1yD8

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rkagerer
5 days ago
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The control panels that fuse schematics and buttons and indicators feel like a peak of design philosophy.

Intuitive, readily interpretable at a glance, spatially oriented (instead of tucked behind layers of tabs and recursive settings).

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