In search of safe nukes

The Idaho National Laboratory is at work on next generation reactors that promise to deliver more reliable energy.

(Fortune) — There is a remote valley in southeastern Idaho — 890 square miles; desolate, dry and stunningly beautiful — that is the place to go for atomic lore. It’s the home of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), where on December 20, 1951, scientists succeeded for the first time in converting nuclear power into electricity. They lit four 75-watt light bulbs. The next day they lit the whole lab.

Other experiments were less successful. Outside the building housing Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 (and the light bulbs it illuminated), in the corner of the parking lot, sit two dinosaur-like relics of the Cold War.


“Back in the 1950s,” my guide explains, “the US fully believed that the Soviets had built nuclear powered airplanes. At the time we did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles and we could not refuel bombers in flight yet, so that was seen as a priority for the Air Force: to build a nuclear powered bomber that could stay in the air for weeks or even months at a time.”

So INL scientists designed and built two air-cooled nuclear reactors/jet engines, and they worked, sort of. “Only problem was the weight-to-thrust ratio still didn’t quite pan out because the reactors” — at 226 tons each — “were enormous.” In other words, they’d never fly. President Kennedy scrapped the program in March 1963.

Fortune