Sixty nine years ago, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 generated enough electricity to power a string of four light bulbs at what is now the Idaho National Laboratory near Arco.
Over my years in Idaho I got to interview many of the 15 men who made arguably Idaho’s biggest moment in history happen. Their deed showed that electricity could be produced by a nuclear reactor.
Today, more than 400 reactors provide 17 percent of the world's electricity. With climate change requiring us to replace carbon dioxide emitters like oil and gas, nuclear power is even more important
Reid Cameron, who was one of those pioneers told me more than 20 years ago they carried flashlights in their pockets just in case the electricity went out the day they started the nuclear power industry. After the lights went on in 1951, Cameron climbed a ladder to write a note on the wall in remembrance of the occasion. He added a fiery cartoon figure breathing out a cloud that has mystified visitors to the reactor since.
"I just made it up," Cameron told me.
When he was done, each of the others also signed, along with the visionary reactor designer, Walter Zinn. Zinn, then the director of Argonne National Laboratory, had been at the side of Enrico Fermi less than a decade before when the first nuclear reactor was built. EBR 1 was his brainchild: A reactor that could produce more fuel than it uses. But his idea has not taken off.
But those were heady days for inventors at the INL. In the nuclear world Idaho was the center of the universe in 1951.
"It was an age when everything was right," Cameron said. "There were no rules."
The lack of rules meant that researchers were free to take risks they would never do later. One Argonne employee told me after they forced a reactor to heat up so fast it caused a steam explosion on purpose. The blast blew the control rod, which regulated the nuclear reaction, right out the top. He walked over afterwards, picked up the rod and put it in another reactor.
It was the "Right stuff years." They thought so anyways.
EBR 1 operated until the end of 1963 when it melted down in an accident. President Lyndon Johnson designated the retired reactor a Registered Historic National Monument before a crowd of about 15,000 people in 1966.
"We have come to a place today where hope was born that man would do more with his discovery than unleash destruction in its wake," Johnson told the crowd.
Today the reactor is the most popular slightly radioactive tourist attraction in America.
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