Springfield Nuclear Power Plant

In the television animated cartoon series The Simpsons, the city of Springfield's electricity is generated from the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. The plant has a monopoly on the city's energy supply, but is sometimes mismanaged and endangers much of the town with its presence.

Based on the plant's appearance and certain episode plots, it likely houses only a single "Unit" or reactor (although, judging from the number of reactor domes and cooling towers, there is a chance it may have two). In one episode an emergency occurs and Homer resorts to the manual, which begins "Congratulations on your purchase of a Fissionator 1952 Slow-Fission Reactor".

The plant is poorly maintained, largely due to owner Montgomery Burns' miserliness. Its safety record is appalling, with various episodes showing luminous rats in the bowels of the building, pipes and drums leaking radioactive waste, the disposal of waste in a children's playground, plutonium used as a paperweight, cracked cooling towers, dangerously high Geiger counter readings around the perimeter of the plant, and so on. In the opening credits a bar of some radioactive substance is trapped in Homer's overalls and later disposed of in the street.

The design and folly of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is based on the real life Trojan Nuclear Power Plant near Matt Groening's home town of Portland, Oregon. Trojan Nuclear Power Plant opened in 1970 was infamous for it's poor construction and maintenance, resulting in leaking steam generators by 1974. The leaking generators ultimately forced the plant to close in 1992.