Thursday, August 2, 2012

Atomic Museum

Today we visited the EBR-1 Atomic Museum which is about 20 miles east of Arco, ID.  We were really impressed with the quality of the museum and how helpful the workers were.  The tour is self guided but they provide a nice guide pamphlet and the different stops on the tour are well marked and had excellent poster boards and descriptions.  The EBR-1 was the worlds first Nuclear Breeder Reactor and was built in the 1950’s.  This reactor is unique in that it actually produces more fuel then it consumed.  It also had a unique capability to take waste fuel from normal commercial reactors that would normally require storage for 100’s of years and convert that waste into a much shorter lived waste.  The down fall of EBR-1’s technology was mostly political.

This museum is well worth the stop if you are in the area.

DSC_3728

Outside of the reactor buildingDSC_3760

Dean messing with the controls… not good!DSC_3734

Valerie trying her skills with a remote manipulator..  She did very well!DSC_3744

This was an early prototype of a reactor for an airplane….  Maybe not such a good idea!DSC_3758

1 comment:

  1. We loved this tour. Jim was the manipulator for us. I was the picture taker.

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