Coal

Watch Stack Come Down at Florida Power Plant

JEA, the electric utility in Jacksonville, Florida, has been decommissioning the St. Johns River Power Park over the past year. A third implosion as part of the decommissioning occurred July 19, as a 640-foot-tall stack and two steam generating boilers were demolished.

Friday’s work followed similar implosions in June 2018, when the plant’s two, 464-foot-tall cooling towers were taken down, and in April of this year when four selective catalytic reactors were destroyed.

The coal-fired plant, which was closed in January 2018 after operating since March 1987, is scheduled to be fully decommissioned in June 2020. JEA has said it will keep at least some of the 2,000-acre site for a future power station, and also for coal ash disposal. The plant was co-owned by JEA and Florida Power & Light.

Total Wrecking & Environmental, a demolition and remediation company based in Buffalo, New York, was awarded a $14.5 million contract to demolish the plant and provided video of Friday’s blast. The company used some 925 pounds of gelatin dynamite, 7,000 linear feet of detonation cord, and 1,000 detonators for Friday’s implosion, after drilling 890 holes in the stack.

POWER staff

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