Sixty years ago today, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 generated enough electricity to power a string of four light bulbs at what is now the Idaho National Laboratory near Arco.
Over my 26 years in Idaho I got to interview many of the 15 men who made arguably Idaho’s biggest moment in history happen.Their deed showed that electricity could be produced by a nuclear reactor.
Today, more than 430 reactors provide 13 percent of the world's electricity. But its future once again remains uncertain in the wake of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan this year.
Reid Cameron, who was one of those pioneers, told me a decade ago they carried flashlights in their pockets just in case the electricity went out the day they started the nuclear power industry. After the lights went on in 1951 Cameron climbed a ladder to write a note on the wall in remembrance of the occasion. He added a fiery cartoon figure breathing out a cloud that has mystified visitors to the reactor since.
"I just made it up," Cameron told me.
When he was done, each of the others also signed, along with the visionary but cantankerous reactor designer, Walter Zinn. Zinn, then the director of Argonne National Laboratory, had been at the side of Enrico Fermi less than a decade before when the first nuclear reactor was built.
EBR 1 was his brainchild: A reactor that could produce more fuel than it uses. It was a brilliant invention, but his idea has not taken off.
Those were heady days for inventors at the INL. In the nuclear world Idaho was the center of the universe in 1951. They build a nuclear submarine prototype on the desert before they launched the Nautilus.
"It was an age when everything was right," Cameron said. "There were no rules."
EBR 1 even survived a partial meltdown in 1955. It was repaired and operated until the end of 1963. President Lyndon Johnson designated the retired reactor a Registered Historic National Monument before a crowd of about 15,000 people in 1966.
"We have come to a place today where hope was born that man would do more with his discovery than unleash destruction in its wake," Johnson told the crowd.
Today the reactor is the most popular slightly radioactive tourist attraction in America with an average of 10,000 visitors.
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Idaho has been guilty of a lot things though.
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.
EBR meltdown was NOT an accident...
RE: "EBR 1 operated until the end of 1963 when it melted down in an accident."
You could say "perhaps" it was an accident, but come on Rocky, even the CDC acknowledged the common word among the workers was this was a jilted lover's triangle. It's the old "If I can't have her, than no one can" OJ Syndrome. The one guy yanked the fuel rods out, which is sorta hard to do by "accident."
Please note that even the well screened astronaughts had one lady who flipped out when jilted. She drove across the country in a diaper to avenge her loss. But when I asked for the environmental impacts of employee terrorism at every official EIS for a nuke project, the official answer is "That will not happen." Media can ignore that, and promote the project as safe, but nuclear power is never "safe"...
Leave the reactor's love life out of this.
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.
Error
Peter, I think both you and Rocky are wrong. EBR-1 had a partial meltdown.. but in 1955, not 1963. You are referring to SL-1, not EBR-1.
Which makes it a premature meltdown.
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.
vote
So it's unanimous- The Rock is wrong again, even though he personally interviewed all those scientists.
Happened to Obama too. You'll get over it quickly.
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.
More errata
Also, operators don't "yank" out fuel rods - fuel rods are not manipulable. It's control rods, Peter.
You're perpetuating the "love triangle" myth which has never been proven; it's been around because it is sexy to tell and re-tell.
Your ignorance is showing....
So THAT over excited the reactor...I see!
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Websites: Everytime you get it the way you're comfortable with somebody gives a monkey a rock, bottle and a dollar.
2 wrongs still make me... :-)
Hi erico & red2purp,
Pardon me for transposing SL-1 into EBR in my haste. And YES, you are also right, it was pulling the Control rods that impaled the fuel rod through the worker, into the ceiling, not pulling the fuel rods.
But the main point remains the same. It is illegal and dangerous for DOE to respond to my official EIS scoping questions on employee terrorism by claiming it will never happen.
But the lover's triangle at the SL-1 meltdown was the probable cause for pulling the control rods. That is what the CDC said. I actually had a patient who was presently then a teacher, but said she managed the apartment where the love triangle went on, so she had no doubt. All hearsay, not facts, of course. But you are not denying the recent astroNUT triangle gone bad, are you? Are you pretending, like DOE, that it will never happen? Homeland Security admits it could happen, even with cyber-terrorism from disgruntled employees.
So I admit my 2 hasty wrongs, but despite that, my main point is still correct...Peter
SL-1
If you're still convinced of the whole love triangle thingy, I suggest you read "Atomic America" by Todd Tucker. He makes a convincing case that the "love triangle" explanation does slanderous disservice to three men who don't deserve to be remembered as such and Tucker indicts the SL-1 program for laxity that would never have been tolerated by the Navy program under Admiral Rickover going on at the same site at the same time. He makes the case that the design of the SL-1 was flawed from the first and the reactor was allowed to deteriorate beyond the point where the Navy program would have ordered it shut down and rebuilt. The perpetuation of the triangular myth is clearly not uniformly accepted and is likely an early attempt at a coverup to prevent harm to the dawning of the commercial reactor business.
You've mis-spoken in this thread so many times already that I doubt you have much credibility left at all, but your main point is a long way for being established "correct". One more mis-statement of yours, it was a control rod part, the "shield plug and part of the connecting rod", that impaled a victim to the reactor building roof, not a fuel rod. The fuel elements of the SL-1 were not rods at all but were instead plates, and the control "rods" were actually cruciform columns that fit between the plate banks in the core.
En-light-ening
The Rocks says, "EBR I started [the] nuclear industry 60 years ago today"
Really?
So the "the nuclear industry" didn't include the Manhatten Project, Hanford, Argonne Lab, or any of that other research?
EBR-1 is where it ALL started. Wow!