EBR-1

This is EBR-1, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, which lays claim to many firsts among nuclear reactors, including being the first to produce electricity.



The control room!



The generator. On the back wall the scientists operating the reactor signed their names in chalk, commemorating the event when electricity was first produced.



A system had to be designed for processing spent fuel, and that's when these manipulators were first designed. The distortion of the light when looking through the thick lead glass is pretty cool.



Outside the reactor building was something really interesting, these reactor test sleds for a nuclear powered airplane concept. The one on the left is a vertical reactor (the big white part) with the jet engines still attached (you can see them on the lower left of the sled). The one on the right is a smaller horizontal reactor, quite close to what would have actually gone in the aircraft, but the jet engines on this one have been removed. They look quite large to power an airplane but most of what you see here is the sled used for testing and to keep the reactor and the engines mounted firmly to the ground during the tests.



Of course there were the requisite displays on the disposal of nuclear waste.



But surprisingly also in the reactor museum was a display on how the Snake River Plain Aquifer upon which the 890 sq mile Idaho National Laboratory (aka the National Reactor Testing Station) is built, is one of the largest aquifers in the world, supplying water to all those potato farms and most of the people in Idaho. Great place for over 50 nuclear reactors huh?






At a nearby highway rest stop was some more information about the laboratory, including this, the only hint of something more sinister among lots of "Atoms for Peace" rhetoric.



Also at the rest stop was this environmental monitoring station. All the fields were working and displaying data except the one in the lower left corner, the one showing the amount of "environmental radiation"


Arco, Idaho was a cool little town, well worth the stop.