DO YOU SWING TO THE LEFT OR TO THE
RIGHT?
Zion Station was the third dual-reactor nuclear power plant in the
Commonwealth Edison (Com Ed) network and served Chicago and the
northern one-fourth of Illinois. This power generating station is
located in the extreme eastern portion of the city of
Zion,Illinois. It is approximately 40 direct-line miles north of
Chicago, Illinois and 42 miles south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The two-unit Zion Nuclear Power Station was retired in February
1998.The 25-year old plant had not been in operation since February
1997, after a control-room operator accidentally shut down Reactor
1 and then tried to restart it without following procedures.
Reactor 2 was already shut down for refueling at the time of the
incident. Commonwealth Edison, owner of the plant, concluded that
Zion could not produce competitively priced power because it would
have cost $435 million to order steam generators that could not be
installed in time to pay for themselves because the plant's
operating license would have expired in 2013.
Plans are to keep the facility in long-term safe storage until
it begins dismantlement after 2010, to be completed in 2014. All
nuclear fuel has been removed permanently from the reactor vessel,
and the fuel has been placed in the plant's onsite spent fuel
pool.
On this site also used to be the Commonwealth Edison Power
House. The Power House used to be an interactive energy museum with
over 60 hands-on exhibits. During it operations the remaining wind
turbine - the modern equivalent of a windmill – used gusts wind off
Lake Michigan to provide half the energy needed to run The Power
House Museum in the shadows of the idle nuclear reactors. After the
closing of the power plant, ComEd had hoped to keep this museum
open, but do to budget cuts, and low patronage the museum closed to
the public in late 1999. Commonwealth Edison in an economical &
environmental friendly move has torn down the building and is
returning the area to its natural habitat. If you use Google Earth
you can see, what the old structure looked like and what beauty is
here today.
This Geocache has been placed in accordance with Chapter 30,
Office of Land Management Operations Handbook ("Policy for
Placement of Geocache on IDNR Managed Properties"), and has been
submitted to the Site Superintendent for approval and
authorization."