How an unused nuclear power plant became home to a world-class acoustics lab

It’s kind of impossible to grasp the enormity of a cooling tower until it’s suddenly right next to you. Never used for their intended purpose, the cooling towers of Washington Nuclear Projects 3 and 5 (WNP-3 and WNP-5) loom over treetops as I drive up to Satsop Business Park, about an hour and a half outside of Seattle. This abandoned nuclear power plant — a strange mix of massive concrete structures in various states of completion — has been repurposed as an advanced acoustics testing facility. 

I visited Satsop on a drizzly day in March to meet Ron Sauro, owner and operator of NWAA Labs. Sound-dampening construction materials, noisy washing machines, even the crew cabin of an airplane — these are all things that have passed through the doors of his lab. When companies need to verify how much sound their products make — or how well they dampen sound — they call Ron. I meet him in the parking lot just outside his office and follow him past a sign that states, in no uncertain terms, that I’m entering the premises at my own risk. I make my way into the finished but never-used auxiliary building that would have housed WNP-3’s nuclear reactor.

It’s unfortunate th …

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