The Pathfinder Atomic Power Plant was a
nuclear power plant built by
Northern States Power
Northern States Power Company () was a publicly traded S&P 500 electric and natural gas utility holding company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is now a subsidiary of Xcel Energy ().
History
The company's founder, Henry Marison Byllesby, ha ...
Company. It was located just northeast of
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Sioux Falls () is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 130th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, which continues up ...
, and west of its suburb of
Brandon. It was named for the 19th century explorer
John C. "Pathfinder" Fremont and was constructed in the mid-1960s in partnership with a group of other investor-owned utilities. The main goal of this facility was to be a 'proof of concept' plant to gain practical experience in operating a nuclear plant. Some of the other participating utilities would also go on to build their own plants. Although the superheater developed by
Allis-Chalmers
Allis-Chalmers was a U.S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. Its business lines included agricultural equipment, construction equipment, power generation and power transmission equipment, and machinery for use in industrial set ...
was plagued with technical difficulties and which led to NSP's eventual decision to retire the reactor by 1967 (and convert the plant to run on gas and oil by 1968), the lessons NSP learned from Pathfinder served the company in its operation of the
Prairie Island and
Monticello
Monticello ( ) was the primary plantation of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, V ...
nuclear plants. The longest Pathfinder ever ran at its full rated power was 30 minutes, and it was only then the company found the flaws that led to the decision to retire the reactor. After sitting idle for 23 years, the reactor vessel was removed from the plant in 1990 and transported to a low-level radioactive material dump in Washington.
Pathfinder would continue as an oil- or gas-fired peaking plant until it was retired in the early 2000s after its cooling tower collapsed in July 2000.
[https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/complex/pathfinder.html Pathfinder, retrieved 2010 Aug 03] In 1994 the Angus C. Anson Generating Station was built at the same site. Its namesake was NSP's South Dakota division manager Angus C. Anson (1954–1993), who was killed in the plane crash that also killed South Dakota governor
George S. Mickelson.
See also
*
List of nuclear reactors
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby uni ...
References
External links
Pathfinderon http://www.nukeworker.com/
NSP: An Illustrated History of Northern States Power Company (NSP, 1999)
{{U.S. Nuclear Plants
Energy infrastructure completed in 1966
Former nuclear power stations in the United States
Buildings and structures in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Buildings and structures in Minnehaha County, South Dakota
Nuclear power plants in South Dakota
1966 establishments in South Dakota
1967 disestablishments in South Dakota