In the middle of rural America sits an empty and deserted nuclear plant. Some may find that hard to swallow, but it’s closer than one might think to their backyard.
The Hartsville Nuclear Plant is located in Trousdale County, Tennessee, a county with a population of fewer than 2,400 residents. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) decided to build the massive nuclear plant on land directly next to the Cumberland River in the 1960s. The plan was to construct four General Electric boiling water reactors to generate electrical power. The plant would have heated water to the point of steam, which would then drive a steam turbine. The heat was to be produced by nuclear fission in the reactor core.
However, the Hartsville Nuclear Plant never materialized. Construction began in 1975 but came to an abrupt stop in 1983, with the project fully canceled in 1984.
Today, the plant sits empty and unfinished. The state later decided to use the site to build a 2,552-bed medium-security prison. The facility, known as the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, was built at a cost of $143 million.