"It's down, and it went quick," said U.S. Energy Department spokesman Jim Giusti, one of the observers authorized to watch the today's 10 a.m. demolition of the 450-foot-tall structure.

"The bottom went out, and it just went straight down," he said in an interview from the scene. "From where we're standing, it just disappeared from the horizon."

The demolition of the $90 million tower completed in 1992 was part of the site's $1.6 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program, most of which were earmarked for cleanup and environmental management projects.

K-Reactor, located across the Savannah River from Plant Vogtle, first went critical in 1954 and was one of the site's five original heavy water reactors created to manufacture material for the nation's nuclear weapons program.

It was shut down in 1988, along with L- and P-reactors, but later earmarked for restart with a mission to produce tritium-an essential ingredient in hydrogen bombs. The cooling tower was built to help the reactor comply with environmental standards for water released into the Savannah River.

In February 1992, the Energy Department announced the reactor would be used only as a reserve facility, to be tested and then shut down unless needed. After a successful test in 1992, K-Reactor was placed on "cold standby" before being shut down completely in 1996.

Today's controlled demolition took months of planning and was accomplished with careful placement of 3,860 explosive charges containing 1,300 pounds of nitroglycerin-based explosives.

American DND and Controlled Demolition Inc. are the demolition contractors.

Reporters were not allowed to observe the demolition, so I am having trouble obtaining video. Hopefully someone from CDI or American DND can post some video.