The Twin cooling towers at the St. Johns River Power Park on Jacksonville’s Northside will be imploded 8AM, Saturday June 16. The facility is owned and operated by JEA and Florida Power & Light and was shut down in January.
The closure of the plant decreased jacksonville’s carbon footprint by 30 percent.
At one time the facility produced 17 percent of Jacksonville’s energy needs.
The lost energy will be replaced by JEA’s natural gas plants. The utility is looking at both nuclear and solar for future long term needs.
The 464 feet tall iconic cooling towers will be blown up by Total Wrecking & Environmental. Total Wrecking is a fourth-generation demolition and environmental remediation contractor based in Buffalo, NY. What was one of the biggest construction projects in Jacksonville history will become one of the largest demolition projects in Jacksonville history.
This is not the first time JEA has had one of their facilities imploded, back in 2002 they imploded the old Southside generating station.
The towers cost over 1.6 billion dollars when they were built in the late 1980’s. It will cost 68 million dollars to remove them and clean up afterward with approximately 14.5 million going to Total Wrecking. Jea says it is cheaper to blow them up than to keep them in operation as well as being better for the environment.
Total wrecking will drill nearly 4000 holes in the structures to place over 1500 pounds of dynamite and run 2 miles of detonation cables.. Once the dynamite is blown both structures will collapse, one on top of the other in about 12 seconds.
As for waste? There won’t be much as 99 percent of the debris are expected to be recycled.
