On January 3rd, 1961, emergency responders were dispatched to the SL-1 reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls after heat sensors triggered an alarm at 9:01 PM.
Inside the reactor building, three military technicians were performing a routine restart procedure on an experimental Cold War-era reactor. A task meant to take seconds turned into a gruesome scene in a matter of milliseconds.
I remember reading about this in Popular Science back then. I was about 10 years old at the time.
ReplyDeleteOooops, goobermint genieass at its best. No core protection, well, not to worry the goobermint will save you
ReplyDeleteIf you are up for some serious history regarding early nukes, check out The Making of The Atom Bomb and Dark Sun both by Richard Rhodes.
ReplyDeleteBoth are excellent reads.
Agree 100% long reads but really detailed and interesting.
DeleteRead about it, and watched a few documentaries. The were manually lifting the control rods using a chain fall. Somehow, they managed to pull the rod out of the reactor, creating a runaway event. 3 technicians killed, the reactor site will be contaminated for centuries.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I heard they were supposed to use a chain fall but the rod was stuck, so the operator trying to pull it reached down and pulled hard so the rod jerked out triggering the prompt criticality event. If he had used the chain fall it would have been a much slower withdrawal...
DeleteI went thru the Navy Nuclear Power training pipeline in 1976 and we learned all about SL-1. Then we drove past the site twice a day commuting from Idaho Falls to the training site up in the National Energy Lab.
ReplyDeleteThere are now training/test reactors *designed* to safely go prompt critical to get high neutron flux pulses. Search youtube for "prompt critical pool reactor" and watch the Triga unit generate a 240MW pulse
The cops were all a bunch of pricks when I was there in '83. They made a point of ticketing out of state plates. Example: They lined up on the main road out of town, ticketing everybody. 1mph over, 2 mph over didn't matter. I got mine at 5 over. Never did pay it. Fuck them assholes.
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Considering how many years Nuc Power sailors had been poaching the eligible farm girls I'm not surprised. I didn't have a car then so I didn't worry about speeding tickets, plus the 1 hour bus trip each way made for a good nap.
DeleteI too remember the incident. Saw the "monument" at INEL, nobody talked about it nor would they answer any of my questions. Now I know.
ReplyDeleteVERY interesting!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting.
"Mother, should I trust the government?".
ReplyDeleteThose were difficult, dark, and dangerous times for everyone everywhere; none of us knew how much so until much later. Men caught in a tide of emergency innovation were the only thin shield for the rest of us; we were partly blind to the intensity of a likely worldwide conflict but military men everywhere were in the mouth of the dragon. The three technicians at that reactor and the many rescuers saw the beast first-hand.
Rest in Peace.
On an SF note, Heinlein wrote "Blowups Happen" before nuclear reactions were well understood, but a Prompt Critical event is pretty much exactly what his operators where going mad trying to prevent. Read that story along side the SL-1 disaster report and shiver.
ReplyDeleteI was today years old when I learned about this incident, and I consider myself well-read on most subjects. Now I gotta jump down the rabbit hole, dammit. Rick T - great reference. Heinlein was a master.
ReplyDelete- Chi.
Messed up but they were still learning back then. Ever mess up when you were still learning your trade. I did a bunch
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