How an unused nuclear power plant became home to a world-class acoustics lab

2 months ago 8

Itâs benignant of intolerable to grasp the enormity of a cooling operation until itâs abruptly close adjacent to you. Never utilized for their intended purpose, the cooling towers of Washington Nuclear Projects 3 and 5 (WNP-3 and WNP-5) loom implicit treetops arsenic I thrust up to Satsop Business Park, astir an hr and a fractional extracurricular of Seattle. This abandoned atomic powerfulness works â a unusual premix of monolithic factual structures successful assorted states of completion â has been repurposed arsenic an precocious acoustics investigating facility.

I visited Satsop connected a drizzly time successful March to conscionable Ron Sauro, proprietor and relation of NWAA Labs. Sound-dampening operation materials, noisy washing machines, adjacent the unit compartment of an airplane â these are each things that person passed done the doors of his lab. When companies request to verify however overmuch dependable their products marque â oregon however good they dampen dependable â they telephone Ron. I conscionable him successful the parking batch conscionable extracurricular his bureau and travel him past a motion that states, successful nary uncertain terms, that Iâm entering the premises astatine my ain risk. I marque my mode into the finished but never-used auxiliary gathering that would person housed WNP-3âs atomic reactor.