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Perry’s idle cooling tower \u2014 a completed, 516-foot concrete skyscraper that has never cooled a single thing \u2014 is the most expensive architectural decoration in American energy history, and it’s about to become the backdrop for a $4.2 billion federal announcement.<\/p>\n
The reactor that tower was built to serve was canceled in 1994 at 45% complete, yet the tower still stands today with no serious plan to use it or demolish it.<\/p>\n
Now Meta has locked in 20 years of output from the one reactor Perry actually runs, and the DOE is prepared to fund a 213-megawatt expansion \u2014 meaning a plant that almost didn’t survive is suddenly one of the most strategically valuable nuclear sites in the country.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Energy<\/p>\n A 440-ton slice of steel rolled through the gates of the world\u2019s biggest fusion experiment before dawn in southern France, the ninth and last piece of a plasma chamber that will weigh 5,732 tons welded together, and each slice already carries 93 miles of factory welds<\/p>\n 4 hours<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Energy<\/p>\n A tungsten alloy held at 2,282\u00b0F for 100 hours shrank the crystals inside it by 60 percent without a single pass through a rolling mill, because two mismatched lattices build up strain while it sits there, doing to the metal what a steel mill does by crushing it<\/p>\n 5 hours<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Energy<\/p>\n 365 trains hauled 364,000 tons of clean stone into Britain\u2019s oldest nuclear waste site over a year and a half, so its earliest trenches can be sealed under a clay cover that swells shut when rain hits it, and the waste itself never has to move at all<\/p>\n 22 hours<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Energy<\/p>\n The first new commercial nuclear fuel plant America has built in more than 50 years finished its shell in 10 months, sized to press uranium into 700,000 billiard-ball spheres a year, and the first reactor it will feed is still waiting for permission to pour concrete<\/p>\n 23 hours<\/p>\n <\/a>AI-generated summary from reviews, comparisons and articles by AutoNotion<\/p>\n There\u2019s a decent chance you\u2019ll be hearing the name Perry a lot next week. Reuters reported<\/a> over the weekend that the Department of Energy plans to lend Vistra, the plant\u2019s owner, about $4.2 billion to boost output across its nuclear fleet. Additionally, the Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to announce it at Perry, on the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio, on Monday. Meta already agreed back in January to buy everything the plant makes for 20 years. Not too shabby when you learn it wasn\u2019t even supposed to make it this far.<\/p>\n But forget the money for a second, because Perry\u2019s most interesting feature is something visible from the road. The plant has two identical 516-foot concrete cooling towers standing side by side. One of them puffs out a steam plume all day. The other one hasn\u2019t worked a single shift in its life.<\/p>\n So how does a nuclear plant end up with a spare skyscraper?<\/p>\n Perry was supposed to be twice as big<\/p>\n We\u2019ll gotta go back to the beginning.<\/p>\n Cleveland Electric Illuminating and a group of partner utilities ordered Perry in the early 1970s as a two-reactor plant, with a large General Electric boiling-water reactor and a 516-foot cooling tower for each unit. Ground broke in 1974, and both units went up together for a while.<\/p>\n Then demand forecasts sagged. This meant work on the second unit stalled in the mid-1980s, and by the end of that decade, Unit 2 sat on hold at roughly 45% complete. The company formally canceled it in 1994, with most major structures already completed, including the entire second tower. Unit 1, meanwhile, loaded fuel in 1986 and went commercial in November 1987 as the 100th nuclear plant built in the United States, by Vistra\u2019s<\/a> count.<\/p>\n Unit 2\u2019s tower never got a reactor to cool. It\u2019s still standing today, and as far as I can tell, there\u2019s never been a serious plan to either hook it up or tear it down. Finished nuclear hardware that never runs is rarer than you\u2019d think, though it happens. Germany built an entire fast breeder reactor, loaded it with liquid sodium, never gave it a single fuel rod, and eventually put a free-fall ride inside its cooling tower<\/a>.<\/p>\n Perry\u2019s spare is basically the restrained American version of that story.<\/p>\n Autonoci\u00f3n Newsletter<\/p>\n No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy policy (opens in new window)<\/a><\/p>\n What does a cooling tower do all day, anyway?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the short version: a reactor boils water into steam, the steam spins a turbine, and then you\u2019ve got to turn all that steam back into water so it can go around again. The cooling tower is where the leftover heat ends up. Warm water pours through the base of the shell, air rushing up the 516-foot chimney carries the heat away, and the cooled water heads back for another lap. A tower like Perry\u2019s doesn\u2019t use fans at all. The shape does the work. Which also means an unused one is basically an enormous, very expensive piece of architecture. (And that\u2019s the short version.) Not every plant bothers with towers, either; California\u2019s last nuclear plant pulls the Pacific straight through itself<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n That prominent steam plume isn\u2019t radioactive, and neither is the idle tower. Water running between the condenser and the tower stays inside its own closed piping loop and never touches reactor water, a point both the operator and Lake County\u2019s emergency planners spell out in writing. That plume you see from the highway? It\u2019s plain water vapor, interestingly enough.<\/p>\n The tower that does work handles a serious load. The reactor it serves produces 1,268 megawatts at full power, making it among the largest boiling water reactors in the country, following a 5% power bump regulators approved in 2000. The plant\u2019s 2006 engineering documentation describes a cooling loop designed to circulate 545,000 gallons per minute, fed by three pumps rated at 185,000 gallons per minute each, through buried pipes 12 feet in diameter. That\u2019s roughly an Olympic swimming pool\u2019s worth of water every 75 seconds, going in a circle.<\/p>\n The rest of the 1,100-acre site is greener than you\u2019d expect from a nuclear station. More than 850 acres of forest and marsh are kept as a certified urban wildlife sanctuary, which puts Perry in the same odd club as the Florida plant whose cooling canals turned into the country\u2019s densest crocodile nursery<\/a>.<\/p>\n Towers built<\/p>\n 2 \u00d7 516 ft<\/p>\n Two natural draft shells finished. One in service, one never connected.<\/p>\n Single reactor<\/p>\n 1,268 MW<\/p>\n GE boiling water reactor, commercial since November 1987.<\/p>\n TARGET<\/p>\n Planned uprate<\/p>\n +213 MW<\/p>\n Extra output Vistra plans to deliver starting by 2031.<\/p>\n Renewed license<\/p>\n 2046<\/p>\n 20-year extension approved in 2025, replacing a license that was due to expire in November 2026.<\/p>\n Perry is about to be pushed harder than ever<\/p>\n Which brings us back to the money we first mentioned.<\/p>\n Perry\u2019s original 40-year license was due to run out this November, and for a long stretch, the smart bet was that the plant wouldn\u2019t outlive it. Vistra\u2019s chief strategy and sustainability officer, Stacey Dor\u00e9, has said the company\u2019s three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania \u201cwere on a path to retirement\u201d as recently as 2020. Instead, regulators renewed Perry\u2019s license in 2025, and it\u2019s now good through 2046.<\/p>\n