Poseidon Energy Plant WV-06

"The Associated Miner's Union's goals are simple. Ultracite has given this plant a new lease on life, and that good fortune should be spread to Poseidon Energy's loyal employees.

Automating away all our jobs is more than just sowing discontent, it's bad for business to throw away all our collective years of experience. The whole of Appalachia can't produce energy without people, no matter what the robot manufacturers say to the contrary."

- Associated Miners Union statement on the Poseidon walkout

Poseidon Energy Plant WV-06 is a location in Fallout 76.

Background
A coal power plant originally built in the 1970s to provide power for the western parts of Appalachia, the plant gained a new lease on life as Poseidon Energy made a deal with Atomic Mining Services to retrofit the plant. Instead of depleting and increasingly expensive coal, the plant would burn ultracite to generate power, using the old coal infrastructure and turbines. The corporate influence of these two companies and their close ties to the federal government resulted in intense controls and oversight, as well as access to military assets, should the need arise. The switchover coincided with an increasingly hostile approach to workers at the plant, culminating in a walkout. The workers wanted a contract that gave them job security and were supported by the Associated Miners Union under its steward, Jacob Hargraves. Although the plant manager, Renee Hargraves, was sympathetic to their cause for reasons both marital and professional, the head of security, Brent Olsen, was not. As per company policy, all workers who joined the picket outside the plant were fired on the spot, giving Olsen the opportunity to replace them with automated workers. To prevent the plant manager from interfering, he declared a state of emergency and a Class-III lockdown, putting him in charge of the plant until the strike was dealt with.

His plan relied on using the military to break up the strike. As the plant was using ultracite, he had no trouble convincing the executives that this was a national security issue. The National Guard arrived with heavy tanks, IFVs, and a full load of HalluciGen, Inc. patented riot control gas. The plan was to gas the picketing strikers, making them turn on each other, turning a strike into a deadly riot that could then be leveraged to further weaken organized labor. What they didn't realize was that the gas would turn the peaceful protesters into a violent, raging horde. Once the gas took effect, they rushed through the smoke, attacking the soldiers and tearing off their gas masks, turning a strike into a bloody disaster.

The AMU steward was one of the first casualties, taking his life when he realized what the gas was doing to the strikers. His wife, the plant manager, took her own life after witnessing the disaster unfold. Although the plant was sealed up securely, the aborted southern expansion was quickly identified by the rampaging horde as a point of access, as Poseidon engineers plainly forgot to install the security doors there. Once the horde was inside, the plant was lost. Olsen holed himself up with his security terminal in the hazardous material storage, logging evidence about the riot and his final statement on a holotape, in a bout of conscience coming a trifle too late.

Unfortunately, with the Great War occurring soon after, there was nobody to act on the evidence and Charleston soon had other problems on its hands. The automated power plant continued to operate, until damage accumulated and forced a shutdown. When the system was finally reset, the evidence of military and corporate involvement in the debacle was erased, with only Olsen's final words surviving.

Points of interest

 * Located at the northeastern end of Charleston, the Poseidon nuclear power plant is a massive beast, with two large cooling towers to the northeast and another expansion to the southwest, surrounding the main building. The parking lot to the south and the main gates border the transformer yard, which is a claimable workshop. Just on the other side of the road is a protest camp erected by the miners during the repeat of the coal wars before the Great War.
 * The exterior has a number of locations to inspect. Each cooling tower has a maintenance hut, with a collectible spawn nearby (western has a bobblehead outside the doors, the eastern a magazine in the hut). The roof is worth checking out as well for a number of maintenance huts and gantries that contain loot spawns, collectibles, and a locked safe.
 * The interior can be confusing due to the amount of nooks and crannies. The main entrance leads to the lobby and staff areas, with the plant office and control room upstairs. Immediately adjacent to it, to the northwest, is the loading dock and fuel storage, with the stairwell to the basement in the connecting corridor. The basement contains the primary locker room, workroom, and maintenance access to fuel storage and through it the reactor. the basement is where nearly all the crafting stations are located, and has a maintenance corridor leading to the expansion cooling tower, including storage and boilers in the adjacent rooms.
 * The main reactor is set up vis-a-vis the turbine hall, connected through gantries and a security and decontamination station.

Notable loot

 * Notes and holotapes
 * Power armor
 * Potential power armor: Basement workroom, behind the level 2 security gate.
 * Potential bobbleheads
 * At the end of the giant T-shaped horizontal pipes that enter the first of the two cooling towers, near a chem-addled skeleton; access via the gantry stairs on the northeast side of the main building.
 * Inside a crate at the very end of the catwalks that circle around the smokestacks on the uppermost roof of the energy plant.
 * On the west corner of the expansion cooling tower roof, by a skeleton slumped against the tower, with chems scattered about. Enhanced jumping may be required to reach this location.
 * In the largest pool in the Fuel Storage chamber, on an underwater girder (interior).
 * In the Reactor Room, on the south side girders (with Cap Stashes), supporting the top of the reactor near the ceiling; carefully jump from the computer bank on the highest gantry to eventually reach it.
 * Potential magazines
 * On the small filing cabinet, left of the metal desk with the broken terminal inside the small blue maintenance hut, on the northeastern gantry platforms and stairs facing the cooling towers (exterior).
 * Propped up against the radio, by the "Teddy Bears' Picnic" scenic anomaly, on the northwestern edge of the main plant roof’s highest level, behind the smokestacks.
 * On the yellow diagnostic cart, near the two gigantic fans on the section of the main plant roof just above the front entrance.
 * Vertical, between the consoles and the machinery, inside the maintenance room in the center of cooling tower #1.
 * Behind some boxes, on the bottom shelf in the locker room near the reactor room (interior).
 * On the lowest shelf of the metal shelves near the overturned cart in the basement locker room (interior).
 * On the desk in the Plant Manager's office, near the windows overlooking the turbine hall (interior).
 * On the table, on the top-most gantry platform in the Reactor Room.
 * Dynamic spawns

Appearances
Poseidon Energy Plant WV-06 appears in Fallout 76.