With a boom and a cloud of dust, demolition contractors Saturday imploded the 600-foot smokestack of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s oldest coal-fired power plant, located in New Johnsonville, Tennessee.
The implosion at the former Johnsonville Fossil Plant clears the 720-acre site for future development and a possible generation project that could advance TVA’s clean-energy technologies.
“I’m sad to see it go,” said Bob Joiner, a TVA retiree who worked at the plant for more than three decades and watched the implosion early Saturday. “That plant was built in the ’40s by the greatest generation. They put all that together with nothing but pencils, paper and slide rules, and it was built to last.”
Construction began on the Johnsonville plant in May 1949 with the first of the plant’s 10 operating units going into service in October 1951. Units 1 through 4 ceased generation as part of a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The last unit ended power production on New Year’s Eve 2017.
“The team set out to honor the Johnsonville legacy by applying the same pride and integrity in the dismantling of the facility that was exemplified in the building, maintaining, and operation of it for almost 70 years,” said Roger Waldrep, TVA vice president of major projects. “Safety is our primary mission, and I’d like to thank the team who were able to complete this portion of the project without any issues.”