WATCH: 540-foot Hartsville nuclear plant cooling tower demolished in 10 seconds after nearly 50 years

The iconic 540-foot cooling tower of the long-abandoned Hartsville Nuclear Plant was demolished, marking the final chapter of a project that had been in limbo for nearly half a century. The Hartsville Nuclear Plant, planned in 1977 near Hartsville, Tennessee, was one of the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) most ambitious energy projects. Originally designed to house four General Electric BWR-6 reactors, each capable of generating 1,233 MWe, enough electricity for nearly 4 million homes, the plant would have been the largest nuclear facility in the world at the time.


TVA officials confirmed that the 540-foot cooling tower was demolished to clear space for future development. According to the TVA, over 900 pounds of explosives were used, and the entire structure came down in under 10 seconds, as reported to the BBC.


Watch the demolition of the 540-foot Hartsville Nuclear Plant cooling tower here


The project was part of TVA’s plan to meet a growing electricity demand in the 1970s and 1980s, alongside other planned plants like Browns Ferry, Sequoyah, Watts Bar, Bellefonte, Phipps Bend, and Yellow Creek. Each reactor was designed to operate at 3,579 MWth and produce a maximum electrical output of 1,233 MWe, bringing the total potential output to nearly 5 gigawatts.

However, after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, public opinion turned sharply against nuclear power, and the Hartsville project was officially canceled the same year. At the time, the projected cost of $13.8 billion (approximately $43.57 billion in 2024 dollars) exceeded TVA’s entire existing power system investment.