Big Rivers Electric Corp. early Saturday morning on April 6 demolished the boiler of the first power plant it ever built and operated.
The implosion of the multi-story boiler, where coal was once burned to produce high-pressure steam to drive a turbine-generator and generate electricity, flattened the structure in mere seconds.
“No issues. It went exactly as planned,” Big Rivers spokeswoman Jennifer Keach reported in an email message.
A 57-second drone video of the implosion and aftermath was posted by Big Rivers on Facebook and is available for viewing at tinyurl.com/Reid-implosion.
The Robert A. Reid Station near Sebree, Big Rivers’ first generating station, began operations in 1966 and generated 65 MW of power until the plant was idled in 2016.
The boiler implosion was the second round to bring down parts of the two idled power plants at the Sebree Station site. The old Reid Station and Henderson Municipal Power and Lights (HMP&L) Station Two smokestacks were imploded in April 2023.
Big Rivers for decades operated the city’s Station Two plant under contract with HMP&L, and the relationship was a contentious one for a variety of reasons. Big Rivers and HMP&L did agree a few years ago that Station Two had reached the end of its useful life, with annual repairs and maintenance making the cost of operating the plant uneconomic.
One of the last disagreements between the two utilities concerned who would be responsible for the cost of demolishing Station Two, which had been estimated at $10 million.
Remarkably, Big Rivers was able in 2021 to secure a bid of just $1.05 million from FED Environmental for insulation removal, asbestos abatement and demolition of the former Station Two complex, including a 350-foot-tall smokestack, and that HMP&L’s share of that cost would be a relatively modest $238,232. The Henderson Utility Commission, which oversees HMP&L, approved that arrangement in February 2022.
The Station Two boiler was imploded last spring and the contractors have spent the last year scrapping material, Keach said.
The scrubber smokestack for Station Two is still in place. Keach said Big Rivers plans to implode that stack after the ash ponds are closed at Station Two and the adjacent Green Station.
The Reid turbine building, office building and control room are still intact, but Keach said the contractors are continuing to dismantle them. The Reid combustion turbine controls have been moved to Green Station.
Also, she said, the fly ash silos, the cooling towers, the barge unloader and some coal conveying systems will be demolished by the end of this year.
The Sebree Station complex remains an active power plant site that’s home to the Green Station units, which have been converted from coal to gas-fired units, and the Reid Combustion Turbine.
Big Rivers once operated five coal-fired power plants: the Reid plant, Station Two plant, Green Station near Sebree, the D.B. Wilson power plant in Ohio County and the Kenneth Coleman power plant in Hancock County.
The Coleman power plant was idled in 2014 when Big Rivers’ two biggest customers, the Century Aluminum smelters at Sebree and Hawesville, stopped buying Big Rivers’ power and won authority to buy power on the open market. It began dismantling the Coleman station in 2021, and Keach said completion is expected in the first quarter of 2025.
In addition to the Green Station and Reid Combustion Turbine, Big Rivers continues to operate the Wilson power plant, giving it 936 megawatts of owned generation. It also receives 178 MW of hydroelectric power from the federal Southeastern Power Administration and expects to receive as much as 160 MW of electricity from the Unbridled solar farm that is under construction on 1,680 acres south of Robards along the Henderson-Webster county line.