I am sure the customers of Consumers Energy just loved to hear you say that. I thought the days of the $1,000 toilet seats were over. Everything comes with a price. If it is a private power generator it is at the expense of the consumer. If it is a government facility it is at the expense of the taxpayer. Somebody brought up a good point today:

Since "explosives softening" obviously wasn't part of the demolition contractor's winning bid, did they have to give Consumer's Energy a credit for all the time they alledgedly saved or did Consumer's Energy have to give them an extra for subjecting them to a more hazardous site?

You need to put aside the "Little Man's" complex and work on a little reading comprehension. No where in this thread does anyone advocate using a wrecking ball to demolish 6' thick walls. There also isn't any argument against blasting reinforced concrete. In fact for any concrete greater than 3" blasting is probably the way to go. A "proper" blast plan is designed to utilize the least amount of explosives to produce debris of a reasonable size and configuration that the demolition contractor can load out with the equipment that is present on site. With a minimal amount of torch cutting of the rebar and minimal amount of downsizing of the pieces of concrete.
" Explosives Softening" is a bogus phrase whereby the explosives subcontractor substantially reduces the amount of drilling, explosives and labor but still charges the same amount as they would otherwise, thereby increasing their already substantial profit margin. The contractor then has to mobilize a crane or other piece of heavy equipment to the site to complete the work putting their operartor in danger trying to bring down a once stable now unstable piece of structure. "Explosives softening" is rarely if at all heard of in the land outside of NRC and DOE work because the people in the land of acronyms are the only ones foolish enough to be suckered in by it. Have you followed any project where the explosives contactor has to remove their own debris? They don't "harmonically delaminate "the concrete, the "blow the snot out of it" Why? Because the removal costs are coming out of their own pockets.
Now, if they could only coin a catchy phrase that would mean "doing an end run around the demolition contractor and convincing the Owner to contract directly with the subcontractor" they might really be in business.

Oh by the way, watching your operator with 75 years of experience doing all the work IS living vicariously in my eyes

You can put all the lipstick you want on a pig, but guess what? At the end of the day it is still a pig.
Why would anybody hire a blasting company, pay for their insurance and overhead to come out to their site and blast a structure 3 times just so they can ball it down?
They balled the Zip Mill down in 8 days. Under Loizeaux's argument it was a successful job too.
Most of us were born at night but it wasn't last night :rolleyes: