Discreet 24/7 Biohazard Remediation in Shippingport, PA

Shippingport is a small borough in western Beaver County, Pennsylvania, located on the south side of the Ohio River about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Shippingport was incorporated as a borough in 1910 and covers about 3.7 square miles, of which roughly 0.35 square miles is water from the Ohio River.

The population of Shippingport was just 160 at the 2020 census, down from 214 at the 2010 census — less than half the town's population in 1940.

At the 2000 census, Shippingport had 237 people living in only 89 households, making it one of the smallest boroughs in Beaver County.

Shippingport is famous as the site of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the world's first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke ground for the Shippingport plant remotely on September 6, 1954, as part of his Atoms for Peace program, operating a bulldozer by remote control to move the first dirt.

The Shippingport reactor first generated electricity on December 18, 1957, initially producing about 68 megawatts — enough power for roughly 12,000 homes at the time.

The Shippingport plant was designed by Westinghouse Electric Corporation working with the Atomic Energy Commission's naval reactors program, and it was operated by the Duquesne Light Company.

The original Shippingport reactor was permanently shut down on October 1, 1982, and its dismantling in the 1980s was the first successful decommissioning and removal of a commercial nuclear reactor in the United States.

Nuclear power still dominates Shippingport today: the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station's two units, which began operating in 1976 and 1987, stand on the same site and employ about 1,000 people from the region.