Are Our Footprints Glowing?

As we drove west from Blackfoot, Idaho on our way from Pocatello to Craters of the Moon, we saw signs for the "EBR-1" museum and references to nuclear energy.  Indeed, we passed a town called Atomic City.  Then there were also signs for the Idaho National Laboratory.  We grew curious and ultimately saw a sign for the nuclear energy museum at EBR-1.  We decided to stop in on our return from Craters of the Moon.  One of the rangers at Craters of the Moon recommended we stop, as well, so we decided to leave enough time to stop.

We weren't disappointed!  EBR-1, short for "Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1," was built by Argonne National Laboratory, predecessor to the Idaho National Laboratory ("INL").  INL is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's missions in nuclear and energy research, science and national defense.  In the late 1940's, it designed and, by 1951 had built, the first experimental breeder nuclear reactor, which was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of providing electricity from nuclear energy while also "breeding" additional plutonium and fissable uranium to refuel nuclear power plants, as well as supply the military's needs for plutonium for nuclear weapons. EBR-1, this first demonstration reactor, succeeded in demonstrating the practicality of producing electricity on December 20, 1951, and, over the next decade, of breeding plutonium, and was ultimately decommissioned in 1963.  You can learn more about it at this Wikipedia article on EBR-1.

Nearby Atomic City originally housed a healthy population of workers who were employed at EBR-1 and INL.  Now, its population has declined to less than 30 people and boasts only a small store and the "Atomic City Bar."  We passed up what might have been a glowing opportunity to sip a cold brew in Atomic City Bar.  But if you'd like to see what this little hamlet looks like now, click this link.

The entire EBR-1 reactor building was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1964 and has been transformed into a museum.  Here's a photo of Kathy at the controls in the original control room. Don't start a meltdown, Kathy!

Not to worry, folks.  The control room had a "SCRAM" button, and if it was necessary to push it, the SCRAM button would shut down the nuclear fission process immediately.  The acronym "SCRAM" was coined in 1942 at Chicago Pile-1, the world's first experimental nuclear reactor.  It's an acronym for "Safety Control Rod Axe Man."  A young male physicist, Norman Hilberry, recounted:

"When I showed up on the balcony on [the date Pile-1 went operational], I was ushered to the balcony rail, handed a well sharpened fireman's ax and told, "if the safety rods fail to operate, cut that manila rope." The safety rods, needless to say, worked, the rope was not cut... I don't believe I have ever felt quite as foolish as I did then. ...I did not get the SCRAM [Safety Control Rod Axe Man] story until many years after the fact. Then one day one of my fellows who had been on Zinn's construction crew called me Mr. Scram. I asked him, "How come?" And then the story."

Needless to say, we didn't need the SCRAM button either.

Party of the museum showed the storage vault for "spent" nuclear rods.  The blackboard in the left background is where the engineers scribbled the status of each rod in its hole in the storage vault.

Another interesting feature of the exhibit was each of the generations of remote handling devices the reactor used to protect its operators as they manipulated the fissile materials.  The vault below has glass over 39 inches thick to shield the operator but permit seeing the materials as they were manipulated:

When EBR-1 was decommissioned, Argonne National Laboratory built EBR-2, a next-generation reactor intended to demonstrate a technology for designing a nuclear power plant that cannot have a meltdown.  Unfortunately, EBR-2 proved the feasibility of the technology just as the American public began rejecting nuclear power as a result of the events at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.  The INL and nuclear physicists still are attempting to convince the public that a practical technology now exists to build nuclear power plants that are not dangerous.  Of course, the events at Fukushima, Japan have further set back that effort and it seems unlikely that the U.S. will turn again to nuclear power unless and until other practical sources of power have been further exhausted.

This was a very unique tour and gave us an entirely new perspective on the technology and issues surrounding nuclear energy.