Adormant nuclear powerplant near Olympia, Wash., may never generate power, but the Laborers’ International Union of North America is putting a lot of energy into adapting the site’s abandoned 1,500-ft-long tunnel as a training tool.

Located at the former Washington Public Power Supply System site, which was abandoned in 1982 after it defaulted on bond payments, the tunnel now serves the union’s new tunnel safety school. It is the only one in North America that targets construction, the laborers say. Augmenting the instruction is $130,000 worth of tunnel-boring machine (TBM) components donated by local contractors.