Video: TVA implodes 500-foot stacks at idled Alabama coal plant

Staff Photo by Tim Barber<br>
Steam rises from three separate stacks into a cold north Alabama sky at the TVA Widows Creek coal fire power plant near Bridgeport in this file photo from December 2000.
Staff Photo by Tim Barber
Steam rises from three separate stacks into a cold north Alabama sky at the TVA Widows Creek coal fire power plant near Bridgeport in this file photo from December 2000.

STEVENSON, Ala. (AP) -- Workers have used explosives to implode a pair of 500-foot-tall (152-meter-tall) stacks at an idled Tennessee Valley Authority coal plant in Alabama.

The federal utility released video Friday of blasts that took down the massive structures at the old Widows Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson.

Explosives also demolished two boilers at the old generating station, which is now home to a data center.

The plant was closed in 2015 as part of the TVA's move to reduce its dependence on coal to make electricity. It has closed five fossil-fuel plants over the last seven years and plans to shut down two more within the next 12 years.

The TVA provides power for nearly 10 million people in seven southeastern states.

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