Nuclear History

Crews are making significant progress on the construction of the K-25 viewing platform at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced on August 20. When completed next year, the elevated platform will offer a sweeping panoramic view of the massive 44-acre footprint of the K-25 Building, which once produced enriched uranium used in the weaponry that ended World War II.

The first high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor ever built in the United States was Unit 1 at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station. This demonstration plant, located on the Susquehanna River approximately 80 miles southwest of Philadelphia, Pa., was tasked with validating HTGR design codes. It produced over 1.2 million megawatt-hours of electricity over 1,349 equivalent full-power days (EFPDs), which was distributed by the Philadelphia Electric Company.

Vice Admiral Eugene P. “Dennis” Wilkinson (Photo: U.S. Navy)

August 10, 2024, marks the 106th birthday of Vice Admiral Eugene P. “Dennis” Wilkinson of the U.S. Navy (who died in his 95th year in July 2013). It is a fitting time to reflect on and honor the man who contributed so much to the navy and the worldwide nuclear power industry.

This video about the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944—the largest naval battle of World War II and a major contributing factor to the end of Japanese involvement—provides an exciting recount of the heroic U.S. submarines USS Darter (SS-227) and USS Dace (SS-247). A young Dennis Wilkinson was the torpedo data computer operator on the Darter, for which he was awarded the Silver Star. Wilkinson’s first-person recollections of this pivotal moment in U.S. naval history have been collected in Underway on Nuclear Power: The Man Behind the Words (2016, ANS).

The United States and Japan began rebuilding relations after the war. In 1966, Wilkinson, by then an admiral, was assigned chief of staff, U.S. Forces Japan, to continue those efforts.

Fast burst reactors were the first fast-spectrum research reactors to reach criticality by using only prompt neutrons with high-enriched uranium as fuel, creating a pulse for microseconds. Among many achievements, fast burst reactors were the first research reactors to demonstrate the ability of thermal expansion to terminate a pulse and to show how this could aid in reactor safety. In addition, fast burst reactors were pivotal in early fission studies including critical mass determination, criticality safety, the study of prompt and delayed neutrons, and much more.

In May’s Nuclear News (p. 86), we reviewed Argonne National Laboratory’s comprehensive work on fast reactors in Idaho. In this article, we summarize the light water reactor work there.¹

In the early days, there were few data on the behavior of reactor materials under severe neutron bombardment. In collaboration, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory developed the Materials Testing Reactor (MTR) for the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) in Idaho. The materials tested in it over the course of 15,000 experiments were reactor fuel materials, structures, cooling systems, and shields. It operated from 1952 to 1970.

Idaho’s nuclear energy history is deep and rich. The National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) began its history as an artillery testing range in the 1940s.¹ Following World War II, Walter Zinn, Argonne National Laboratory’s founding director and Manhattan Project Chicago Pile-1 project manager, proposed to the Atomic Energy Commission that a remote location be found for building test reactors. In 1949, he and Roger S. Warner, AEC’s director of engineering,² developed a list of potential sites from which the NRTS was selected. Over the decades, quite a few companies and AEC national laboratories built 52 experimental and test reactors at the NRTS, including 14 by Argonne.³ (For a brief AEC video on the NRTS, see youtube.com/watch?v=C458NsH08TI.)

When the U.S. Fusion Energy Outreach Team declared the second week of May as Fusion Energy Week, they were recognizing the May 10 birthday of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin—the British-born American astronomer who applied principles of quantum physics, chemistry, and astronomy to become the first to realize—at the age of 25—that stars and the universe itself are mostly composed of hydrogen and helium, and that the stars could be sorted by their spectra into groups that corresponded to the temperature of the stars.

By late 1960, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission authorized plans to build a Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the lab already had about 13 years of experimentation with molten salt reactors under its longest-serving lab director, Alvin Weinberg. The MSRE operated from 1965 to 1969, proving that molten salt reactors could operate reliably, and with alternatives to uranium-235 too.

We welcome ANS members who have careered in the community to submit their own Nuclear Legacy stories, so that the personal history of nuclear power can be captured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.

As an undergraduate I studied physics at the University of Athens. I entered the university in 1955 after successfully passing a national exam (came up fourth in a field of about 700 candidates). Upon graduation and finishing my mandatory two-year military service, the plan was to teach physics either in a public high school or as a tutor for a private for-profit institution, preparing high school students for the national exam.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting on May 8 to discuss the license termination process for the retired nuclear-powered merchant ship, the NS Savannah. During the meeting, NRC staff will discuss the license termination process and receive public comments on the remaining cleanup activities described in the license termination plan for the historic ship, which may see a second life as a floating museum.

Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) was an Atomic Energy Commission program with the goal of producing a portable and dependable power source centered around nuclear technology that could be utilized in land, sea, and space applications. The program aimed to provide a compact reactor—a necessity for space applications—and ran from 1955 until 1973, when it was discontinued.

We welcome ANS members who have careered in the community to submit their own Nuclear Legacy stories, so that the personal history of nuclear power can be captured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.

The James Wm. Behrens family legacy in America starts with Henry H. Behrens, who came across the pond from Germany in 1857. He was later joined by Wilhelmina, also from Germany, and they were married in Alton, Ill., in about 1862. One of their sons, George Wm. Sr., was my grandfather. He and his wife, Frances Walker (of Irish and English descent), had three sons, one of whom (George Wm. Jr.) was my father. I was born in 1947 and raised in the small country town of Bunker Hill, Ill. I attended Bunker Hill elementary and high schools, graduating from the latter in 1965.

Grace Stanke

I just spent 13 months as Miss America 2023 advocating for nuclear energy. Throughout those 13 months, I traveled approximately 280,000 miles to 23 states and eight countries. I have now seen eight different power plants (seven in the United States and one in Japan). I visited radiological isotope production facilities, reprocessing facility construction sites, research facilities, and more. My work extended to visits at schools, trips to talk with state and national legislators, and stops at varying professional groups looking to learn more about nuclear science. It certainly was an interesting year, and one that I could not have foreseen.

Experiences: One thing that this year has made me appreciate about the nuclear industry: No matter what facility, and no matter what country you are in, there is always a plan. I never thought I would be so giddy to walk into a power plant and sit down for a pre-job brief, but honestly, I love them now. The desire to be prepared and have a plan is not so present in most other industries!

In March 1949—75 years ago this month—the 25-kilowatt reactor known as Clementine reached full power. As an experimental reactor, it had a rather long and successful run. It was the world’s first fast neutron (high-energy) reactor and operated from initial criticality in 1946 to final shutdown in 1952.

Oppenheimer won all sorts of awards last Sunday at the Oscars, but how much Manhattan Project history do you really know?

Take the quiz now!

To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has released a YouTube video featuring some of the professional women that work at the department’s Paducah Site in Kentucky.

The Nuclear Sublime is a new large-format photobook that features fascinating and unusual photographs of the interiors of nuclear reactors and power plants across the United Kingdom.

In February 1957, construction was completed on the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE), a sodium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor with an output of 20 MWt. The design of theSRE had begun three years earlier in 1954, and construction started in April 1955. On April 25, 1957, the reactor reached criticality, and the SRE operated until February 1964.

What will happen to the retired nuclear-powered merchant ship, the N.S. Savannah? The Maritime Administration (MARAD) of the Department of Transportation is investigating possibilities for the vessel’s future, whether it be in disposition, transportation, or preservation.

Lusztig

The documentary film Richland, which won awards at the Tribeca Festival and Sheffield (U.K.) DocFest last year, continues to gain exposure. Directed by Irene Lusztig, a self-described “feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, educator, and seamstress,” the documentary explores the community and “nuclear origin story” of Richland, Washington, a town that was built by the U.S. government to house Hanford Site workers who made the weapons-grade plutonium for the atomic bombs of the Manhattan Project.

Washington State University offered a free screening of the documentary last week at its main Pullman campus, followed by a discussion with the director and Robert Franklin, an assistant professor in history at the university’s Tri-Cities campus and the assistant director and archivist for the Hanford History Project.