Nuclear History

In commemoration of National Maritime Day, there will be an open house on the NS Savannah this Sunday, May 18, in Baltimore, Md. The world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship, Savannah was built through a joint program between the Atomic Energy Commission and the Maritime Administration (MARAD) as part of President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program.

Learn more: For more details on Sunday’s tour of the Savannah, click here.

In the late 1950s, the Swedish government decided to undertake a large-scale nuclear energy project. Situated about 75 miles southwest of Stockholm on the Baltic coast, Marviken was located on a peninsula, allowing for the cooling water intake and outlet to be located on either side of the peninsula. The coastal location also allowed the large reactor pressure vessel to be delivered by ship.

In a historic photo, students gather at the Oak Ridge high school in Tennessee. (Photo: DOE)

The Tennessee legislature has approved a $3.2 million proposal to fund a monument that will honor a group of 85 black former students known as the Scarboro–Oak Ridge 85 who, with support from the Atomic Energy Commission, became the first students to enter a previously white-only public school in the southeastern United States.

"We want to make sure that Oak Ridge and the Scarboro 85 get their rightful place in the civil rights history timeline; we do not want to be left out," said John Spratling, chair of the Scarboro 85 Monument Committee.

ANS recognition: The American Nuclear Society officially recognized and honored the Scarboro 85 in 2021 by awarding the group with the inaugural Social Responsibility in the Nuclear Community Award at that year’s Annual Winter Meeting.

The American Nuclear Society presented the Illinois Institute of Technology with a plaque last week to officially designate the Armour Research Foundation Reactor a Nuclear Historic Landmark, following the Society’s decision to confer the status onto the reactor in September 2024.

Nichols

The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.

As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”

. . . and today

Ralph Cooper in 1955. . .

Variety characterized my career: in profession (engineer, physicist, educator), in field (energy, space, defense), in technology (fusion, lasers, nuclear), and in community (STEM diversity, scouting, social service).

After earning my energy engineering degree from The Cooper Union in New York and my Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois, I was most excited by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory’s 1957 program (pre-Sputnik) to develop a nuclear rocket engine. There I worked on everything from reactor physics to vehicle design and mission analysis. I participated in the Gardner Committee that recommended the Apollo program, a thrill for a young scientist.

The proposed location of Douglas Point in Maryland, on the banks of the Potomac River, compared to currently operating nuclear plants in Maryland and Virginia.

The Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station that is the subject of this article is not the CANDU reactor that operated in Ontario from 1966 to 1984. This one was a proposed nuclear power plant in Charles County, Md., that was to provide power to the Washington D.C. area, about 30 miles north of the intended site.

In the early 1970s, the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) was looking for additional means of generation. At the time, the Washington D.C. metropolitan area was one of the fastest growing regions in the nation.

Site selection was tricky for PEPCO, as the company was contending with a confined load in a growing urban area. A new site as near as possible to the load center that could house at least 2,000 MWe of generating capacity and keep development costs down was needed. Three sites were ultimately reviewed: Douglas Point on the lower Potomac River, a second site toward the mouth of the Potomac River, and a third on the shore of Chesapeake Bay.

In 1989, the Savannah River Plant was renamed the Savannah River Site. It was originally established in 1950 near Aiken, S.C., to produce nuclear materials for the nation, primarily for defense purposes. The site consisted of a heavy water production plant, three fuel fabrication facilities, five production reactors, two nuclear separation facilities, waste management facilities, tritium processing facilities, and the Savannah River National Laboratory. The main isotopes produced were, by priority, tritium, plutonium-238, and plutonium-239.

The July 2024 issue of Nuclear News focused on fusion. Editor-in-chief Rick Michal highlighted in his column (p. 4) Los Alamos National Laboratory’s open access special issue of the American Nuclear Society journal Fusion Science and Technology, titled The Early History of Fusion. This article provides a brief summary of the issue—and we encourage readers to explore all of the full papers.^a

I like to say that I ended up at Massachusetts Institute of Technology because of my father. He saw that I seemed intimidated by the prospect of going there, so he dared me, figuring I would take the bait. And I did.

I graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s in physics in 1968, and two days later I married my classmate, Mike Marcus. After a summer at Ft. Monmouth, where I studied radiation damage to semiconductors, we spent the next few years back at MIT in grad school—Mike in electrical engineering and I in nuclear engineering. It was Mike who steered me toward nuclear engineering, noting that my interest was radiation damage to materials, and the nuclear engineering department was doing more of that than the physics department.

A trailblazing nuclear trade journalist, a UFO-debunking nuclear physicist–turned–space scientist, and the engineer behind both America’s first licensed reactor and the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship: this was the visionary trio who founded the American Nuclear Society 70 years ago.

It’s safe to say that readers of Nuclear News are familiar with decommissioning. It’s even safe to assume that experienced decommissioning practitioners are familiar with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and how it applies to typical projects. What’s different about the N.S. Savannah is that the entire project site is a historic property—and in fact, is a federally owned National Historic Landmark (NHL), a status that confers the highest level of protection under law. Federal owners of NHLs are obligated to minimize harm in both planning and actions. Distilled to its salient point, no federal owner of an NHL should destroy it if there’s a reasonable alternative. That level of preservation is not what we normally associate with nuclear decommissioning. This perfectly summarizes the challenges, and opportunities, that decommissioning Savannah offered. The story of how the Maritime Administration (MARAD) managed these two otherwise contradictory processes showcases how historic preservation and decommissioning can positively intersect, provides a pathway for other historic facilities, and further adds to the already illustrious history of one of our nation’s significant 20th century landmarks.

Julie and Jim Byrne on their wedding day, May 22, 1976.

As I was finishing my studies at the University of Pittsburgh and about to graduate with a degree in civil engineering, I talked to a local navy recruiter about a position with the Seabees. He told me there were no Seabee billets, but that the navy had a nuclear power program that might interest me. When I said yes, it wasn’t long before I was whisked off to Washington, D.C., to interview with someone named Admiral Hyman Rickover. The one thing they told me was to stand up to “the kindly old gentleman.”

The day started with technical interviews and then I was ushered into the admiral’s office. I was a typical college student, and I spent my money on food and beer and not on haircuts. On seeing me, Admiral Rickover told me that I looked like a girl. After a bit of back-and-forth, he asked me a couple of other questions. His last comment to me was that I must know something and to get out of his office.

Fulton Station was to be a two-unit high-temperature gas-cooled reactor that was originally planned to start commercial operation in 1981 for Unit 1 and in 1983 for Unit 2. Each reactor was to provide 1,160 MWe of power. The nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) and fuel were to be developed by General Atomics (GA), and engineering firm Stone & Webster was charged with handling the construction. The Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) had big plans for Fulton Station, but ultimately, the plant was never built.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the American Nuclear Society.

Plenty of sources incorrectly list our birthday, but the reality is that October 11, 1954, is the correct date for the establishment of ANS.

John Kelly, ANS past president (2018–19), passed away peacefully in his sleep on October 3, 2024, in Gilbert Ariz., at the age of 70. Kelly was born on March 9, 1954, and was the eldest of Jack and Aileen Kelly’s six children.

His career, which spanned more than 40 years, began at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., where he focused on safety and severe accident analysis. His leadership led him to Washington D.C., where he served as the deputy assistant secretary for nuclear reactor technologies at the U.S. Department of Energy. Kelly played a critical role in shaping nuclear policy and guiding the world through significant events, including the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan. At the end of his career, he was honored to serve as the American Nuclear Society’s president. In retirement, he was actively involved with ANS in technology events and mentoring the next generation of scientists.

Kelly is survived by his wife, Suzanne; his children Julie Kelly-Smith (Byron), John A. (Sarah), and Michael (Nicole); and grandchildren Kiri and Kyson Smith and John and Maximilian Kelly. His family was his pride and joy, including his cherished dog, Covie, who brought him happiness in recent years.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Nuclear Society or Detroit Catholic Central High School (27225 Wixom Road, Novi, MI 48374). Please designate Memorial and specify John Kelly ’72 Memorial Fund.

In honor of Kelly's commitment to ANS and to celebrate his life, his profile from the July 2018 issue of Nuclear News is published below.

The American Nuclear Society was formed in 1954 in the wake of President Eisenhower’s seminal Atoms for Peace speech. Around the same time that Congress was debating the Atomic Energy Act and John Landis was helping establish ANS, the National Security Council began deliberating about adding a nuclear-­powered merchant ship to the nascent Atoms for Peace program. We like to imagine that the idea germinated after Mamie Eisenhower christened the U.S.S. Nautilus, but the truth seems much drier. Regardless, Ike championed the project and announced it to a surprised crowd in an April 1955 speech in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Landis would become the principal architect of the ship’s nuclear power plant. Although Savannah’s reactor now rests in the low-level radwaste repository in Clive, Utah, the ship’s prospects are as bright as the future of ANS itself.

Ian Wall early in his career . . .

I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1958. Nuclear power was viewed favorably at the time, so I took a 1-year course on the subject. I was then offered fellowships at Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and thought the latter would be more interesting, so I moved to Cambridge, Mass., to study nuclear engineering. After completing my doctorate in 1964, I joined the American Nuclear Society and took a job with General Electric, then in San Jose, Calif.

In 1967, GE assigned me to explore the use of probability in reactor safety. At that time, the prevailing opinion was that the probability of a severe accident was infinitesimally small and the consequences would be catastrophic.

The Hallam nuclear power plant in Nebraska, about 25 miles southwest of Lincoln, was a 75-MWe sodium-­cooled, graphite-moderated reactor operated by Consumers Public Power District of Nebraska (CPPD). It was co-located with the Sheldon Power Station, a conventional coal-fired plant. The facility had a shared control room and featured a shared turbo generator that could accept steam from either heat source.

Tonight, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is expected to offer some policy details in a speech at the Democratic National Convention. With nuclear energy getting firm bipartisan support in Washington, D.C., it won’t come as a surprise if Harris backs nuclear power investments as part of her energy and climate policies.

But 11 campaigns and 44 years ago, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter and Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan were on the campaign trail in the first presidential election contest after the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island. Democratic and Republican party operatives hashed out policy platforms that took stock of nuclear energy—and Nuclear News took note.