SURGOINSVILLE — For locations to shoot their futuristic, post apocalyptic short film, a group of East Tennessee State University students has chosen a decaying relic from Hawkins County’s past.
Monday afternoon student filmmakers Mike Fink of Kingsport, Cory Dinkel of Bristol, and Andrea Goody of Asheville, N.C., took a tour of the abandoned nuclear reactor site at the Phipps Bend Industrial Park. In the 1970s the Tennessee Valley Authority began construction of a nuclear power plant in the Phipps Bend area of Hawkins County near Surgoinsville, but the project was abandoned in the early 1980s.
For 30 years, the concrete structure where two reactors were to be located has stood idle about 200 yards from a steel girder skeletal frame of a cooling tower.
Shortly after abandoning the project, the TVA donated the property to a joint venture of Hawkins County and Kingsport for the purpose of starting the industrial park that exists there today.
Fink has already made several comical short films that take place in a post apocalyptic setting.
He said finding a 30-year-old abandoned concrete nuclear plant seems too good to be true.
“The location is absolutely beautiful, and we have very high hopes,” Fink said Monday. “I had heard it mentioned by a friend, and I thought, there’s no way. This is too perfect. We just drove around until we found the right people and talked to the right people, and now we’re here.”
Last month the Hawkins County Industrial Board gave its blessing for the ETSU students to film at the old nuclear plant construction site.
The reactor facility is surrounded by a security fence and barbed wire, and isn’t open to the public.
Signs are posted all around the facility stating, “Extreme Danger: Keep Out.”
Hawkins County Industrial Developer Lynn Lawson, who led the students on their tour of the facility Monday, said the signs aren’t exaggerating.
Everywhere you turn, you’re only a few feet from a manmade hole in the floor with a 30-foot drop, which apparently would have served some purpose had the nuclear reactors been fired up.
Although the filmmakers said the abandoned nuclear plant is perfect for their purposes, Lawson admitted that he’s a bit leery about letting anyone onto the facility.
“This is a fairly unique facility, so we thought we’ll let the students utilize it,” Lawson said.
“But it’s a very dangerous facility. If it wasn’t a school project, this wouldn’t be occurring.
“This is basically to help the kids.”
Filming is expected to take place sometime in April, and Lawson said someone from the Industrial Board will be on hand to monitor the project to make sure no one inadvertently puts himself in danger.
Although the backdrop of the proposed film centers on survival in a bleak, post apocalyptic setting, Fink said the movie is really about “love lost and getting over it.”
Fink’s past films can be viewed by searching YouTube for his channel called “VIDEOBAKERY,” which has 8,774 subscribers and has logged more than 858,000 video views.