found: Brightwater tunnel-boring machine and tunnel parts

Sitting in a gravel lot by chain-link around the more-completed cooling tower of the unfinished nuclear plant in Satsop. Rusty. It's not the complete machine; the rearward segment clearly meant to have at least one more segment fitted onto its back face. Cables have been sheared off, and there are cutting-torch lines.

At first glance I assumed it was something to do with the construction of the cooling tower, but it's nothing like that age. I'm pretty sure it's Brightwater gear, going by names and parts mentioned here -- Herrenknecht-brand TBM, and the stacks of concrete segments (manufacture-dated in 2009) are labeled "CSI-Hanson Brightwater".

What's funny is that it's rusty like it's been sitting out in the weather for a while, but the two airlock tubes (apparently named "Helga" and something) are marked as pressure tested this July 13. What's also funny is why truck it to Satsop to drop in an empty lot. And again, then to pressure-test it, and the grease didn't smell old either.

Oh yeah, by some fresh-looking spray-paint markup on the ground it looked like the cutterhead might have been been placed in current position recently, and the TBM's concrete chock blocks had been shifted recently enough to leave vegetation-bare spots.

BTW, while wondering about the hyperboloid shape of cooling towers

(and not running across any strong explanation for why that shape) I happened on the Adziogol lighthouse. "is a graceful vertical lattice hyperboloid structure of steel bars, 70 meters high."



(Now if what you have available is straight steel bar stock, then a ruled surface form must be a great temptation, but surely that's not what motivates nuclear cooling tower builders?)