In article ,
Arny Krueger wrote:

The Hoover Dam in Nevada and the Grand Coulee dam in Washington state were
also built at about the same time. The Grand Coulee Dam provided massive
amounts of electric power to the Hanford plutonium refining facility.

Hanford consisted of running Uranium through carbon moderated water
cooled reactors, and then disolving the slugs in acid and chemically
seperating out the plutonium. (Buzzword: Purex). Not all that much
power demand, but tankloads of really radioactive crap that's still
there, 65 years later.

It was aluminum smelters. (The output of which got turned into heavy
bombers during WWII). There were, postwar, seven in Washington,
two in Oregon and one in western Montana, producing about a third of
the country's Aluminum. With the increasing population's power demand
soaking up the excess and raising power prices, and new competition
from Russia and Iceland, most, or all of them, have shut down now.

Eventually, in the last incarnation of the plutonium production facilites,
the N reactor, the cooling was used to generate electrical power.

(A new use for the power is Internet server farms. Microsoft has a big
one in Euphrata, near Grand Coulee, and Google has a one down in Oregon,
at The Dalles or Hood River).

Mark Zenier
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)