Happy Birthday EBR I
Exactly 60 years ago today in Arco, Idaho, scientists and engineers successfully used nuclear energy to power four 200-watt light bulbs, laying the groundwork for decades of clean electricity and a strong U.S. nuclear energy industry.
At 1:23pm on December 20, 1951, Argonne National Laboratory director Walter Zinn scribbled into his log book, “Electricity flows from atomic energy. Rough estimate indicates 45 kw.” At that moment, scientists from Argonne and the National Reactor Testing Station watched four light bulbs glow, powered by the world’s first nuclear reactor to generate electricity.
Fifteen years later, in Arco, Idaho, President Johnson stood at this same site and designated the reactor a national historic landmark. He said, “We have moved far to tame for peaceful uses the mighty forces unloosed when the atom was split. And we have only just begun. What happened here merely raised the curtain on a very promising drama in our long journey for a better life.”
Department of Energy Video
Idaho National Laboratory video on EBR 1 (loads slowly)
Read the full text exclusively at CoolHandNuke online now
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1 comment:
This is cool and fascinating retro. Thanks! Irony is, in the sixty years since those bulbs were lit how many lives were lost and maimed by generating electricity by oil and gas and coal as opposed to nuclear? You'd think sixty years was long enough chance for the Doomsday mega-death nuclear event hawked by anti-nukers to happen, yet even in the rare three-count nature-fluke "worst event ever!" incident of Fukushima, you'd rather be there than around the way more occasional "worst cases" of oil and gas accidents!
Keep on nuking!
James Greenidge
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