December 20, 2024 Newsletter
As 2024 comes to an end, nuclear power is poised for a resurgence.
This issue traces the beginnings of civilian nuclear power in the USA in the decades following World War II. For twenty years, the USA led the world in developing the blueprint for nuclear power reactors.
As former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission James R. Schlesinger once said, “Nuclear reactor development was remarkable, as if aviation history went from Kitty Hawk to a Boeing 747 in a decade and a half.”
Most of the country’s nuclear plants were built between 1970 and 1990. After Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), public opposition, inexpensive natural gas, regulatory uncertainty and soaring construction costs stymied new nuclear power plants for the next 30-plus years.
Today Big Tech’s enormous appetite for reliable, carbon-free energy has jump-started nuclear power plants. Microsoft plans to restart Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, shut down since 1979. Similarly, Google and Amazon are launching advanced small modular reactors to power their data centers in California and the Pacific Northwest, respectively.
This issue also notes that historians continue to debate whether Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party. Hibakusha are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as the US invests $1.7 trillion in its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile plans are underway around the world to recognize the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb. Stay tuned!
IDAHO’S NUCLEAR PAST AND FUTURE
Immediately after World War II, the United States engaged in an intense competition with the USSR to be first to develop civilian nuclear power. In 1946, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) created the Argonne National Laboratory with a core of Manhattan Project veterans, including Walter Zinn as director. In 1949, Zinn selected the Idaho Reactor Testing Station (now the Idaho National Laboratory) for testing the design of nuclear reactors.
On December 20, 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I (EBR-I) produced the first usable quantities of electricity from nuclear energy, illuminating four light bulbs. As Leonard Koch, an EBR-I engineer, said, “EBR-I was the birthplace of real nuclear power. It was the Kitty Hawk, and we were the Wright brothers.”
Over two decades, 52 testing reactors were built at the Idaho site to understand and predict reactor behavior. This knowledge became the basis for the design and operational codes for nuclear power reactors worldwide. By the early 1970s, the nuclear industry was established and the reactors were no longer needed. Today only three remain.
FIRST REACTORS IN OVER 50 YEARS IN IDAHO
The Idaho National Laboratory is poised to build its first nuclear reactor on site in 50 years. The MARVEL Micro Reactor (pictured above) is an advanced nuclear reactor that can generate about 85 kilowatts of heat. The heat can can be converted to about 20 kilowatts of electricity, enough for about 80 homes.
Prefabricated, the small reactor can fit on the back of a semi-trailer truck. The reactor requires minimal staff and is ideal for small rural communities or desalinization projects. The laboratory expects to finish the first reactor in 2026. Afterwards, industry will be encouraged to deploy the MARVEL reactors in a variety of roles. See YouTube here for more.
MICROSOFT TO RESTART THREE MILE ISLAND
Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear plant’s partial reactor meltdown in 1979 caused widespread public panic over nuclear power plants. Forty-five years later, Constellation Energy is planning to recommission one of the four units.
Restarting Three Mile Island will take several years. The plan is part of a broader push to bring mothballed nuclear facilities back to life in the US and other countries. The voracious demand for clean energy to power artificial intelligence data centers, cryptocurrency, and rising consumer use has led to a renewed look at nuclear energy.
Microsoft has signed a power purchase agreement to buy all the nuclear electricity from the restarted plant for twenty years but wants ratepayers and taxpayers to pick up the costs for refurbishing the plant. If all goes well, the plant is expected to reopen in 2028.
GOOGLE BACKS SODIUM-COOLED REACTORS
Google is partnering with Kairos Power to develop a series of high-tech small modular reactors that use molten salt as a coolant (KP-FHR). A non-water-cooled technology has not been approved for construction in the US in more than 50 years.
In the early 1960s, Argonne National Laboratory designed and built the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) that used sodium cooling. In April 1986, EBR-II gained national attention as tests demonstrated its inherent safety, regulating its own temperature and power without operators intervening. Unfortunately, three weeks later the Chernobyl accident happened, and in 1994 the EBR-II was shut down.
Today, EBR-II’s inherent safety features are a requirement for any advanced reactor design. With Google’s investment in Kairos Power, sodium-cooled technology is getting a long-overdue second chance.
AMAZON TO BUILD REACTORS AT HANFORD
Amazon is investing in four advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) to be built near the Columbia Generation Station on the Hanford site north of Richland, WA. In 1982, the Washington Public Power Supply System, now Energy Northwest, halted construction of four nuclear reactors there because of massive cost overruns. Only Reactor 2 was completed and now generates 1,000 MW of energy.
Amazon is offering almost $334 million for a multiyear feasibility study of a cluster of SMRs at the site. The reactors will be designed and built by X-energy, a leading developer of SMRs in Rockville, MD. The reactors will be owned and operated by Energy Northwest,
The SMRs are expected to generate 320 megawatts (MW) of energy in the first phase and 960 MW if the cluster is expanded to 12 SMRs. Amazon would have first access to the power for its data centers around the Pacific Northwest. If successful, Amazon will work with X-energy to build SMRs across the country. By 2039, Amazon envisions that by 2039 its SMRs could collectively power 5,000 MW.
An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on December 19, 2024 provides further details about AI’s gargantuan demand for energy and the challenges ahead. Nuclear power may encounter opposition but has support from a savvy industry with plenty of money to invest.
WAS OPPENHEIMER A COMMUNIST?
In The New York Times on October 8, 2024, William J. Broad discussed recent efforts to prove once again that Oppenheimer had formal ties to the Communist Party. Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies Program at Harvard, is inviting historians to address this issue. Kramer said, “I also have no doubt that [Oppenheimer] perjured himself” [when he denied that he was a Communist Party member].
Kai Bird will have none of it. Bird is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of American Prometheus, the Pulitzer-Prize winning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The book is the basis of Christopher Nolan’s movie “Oppenheimer.” Bird dismissed the latest reports by historians as “marshmallow evidence” and accused them as “pushing their own little crusade.”
Julie Fisher Melton, daughter of Oppenheimer’s close wartime assistant, David Hawkins, was definitive. In AHF’s interview in 2016, Melton said “Oppenheimer was never a party member. Whatever the right-wingers say, he just wasn’t.”
“Oppenheimer, like many people at Berkeley before the war, was a sympathizer of loyalist Spain, and that was really the cause that got most people engaged in left-wing politics. Not just [Communist Party] members, but non-members as well.”
PLEAS FOR PEACE AND GROWING ARSENALS
Nihon Hidankyo, a group of hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors, received the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 for “demonstrating through witness testimonies that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” Formed in 1956, the group worked to educate the world about the catastrophic human consequences of nuclear weapons.
The hibakusha helped convince the United Nations to support an international treaty for a total ban on nuclear weapons. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force on January 22, 2021, but was not supported by the US or other countries that possess nuclear weapons. With the passing of the hibakusha generation, the world looses important eye-witnesses to catastrophes inflicted by nuclear weapons.
Robert “Bo” Jacobs, a nuclear historian at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan, is strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. In making the case against them, Jacobs emphasizes the economics of nuclear weapons. “There are many more ways to get significantly better security than spending a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons.”
The New York Times reported on October 13, 2024, that the US is poised to spend $1.7 trillion to overhaul the US’s outdated nuclear arsenal. This has been a boon for two of the Manhattan Project sites. Oak Ridge’s Y-12 National Security Complex will be the center for processing highly enriched uranium. The Los Alamos National Laboratory is assigned to produce of 30 plutonium pits per year by 2026. On October 1, 2024, the Laboratory produced its first pit for the weapons arsenal.
Basically abandoned by Russia, the New Start Treaty officially expires in February 2026 with no prospect for renewed talks. Will investing in nuclear weapons achieve greater security or will nuclear escalation spiral out of control and consume resources for other defense and domestic needs? To complicate matters, China is striving to rival the US and Russia in its nuclear capability with new warheads and delivery vehicles and expanding into orbital space. Slowing down the escalation and establishing new nuclear arms controls are urgently needed before if it too late.
CELEBRATING 80 YEARS
On September 26, 1944, the B Reactor at Hanford went “critical” for the first time. To commemorate this milestone in nuclear history, the National Park Service, B Reactor Museum Association, Department of Energy and others held an event on October 16, 2024. The Mid-Columbia Mastersingers sang “Roll on Columbia,” and speakers remembered the history of the B Reactor. Vanis Daniels, President of the African American Community Cultural Education Society (@AACCES) talked about the contributions of African Americans. Former Congressman Doc Hastings, who was instrumental In the enactment of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Act in 2015, attended.
A documentary on 80 years of atomic history is underway in France and other initiatives are in the works worldwide. More details in the new year.
MAKING A LITTLE RED WAGON
Katatra Vasquez was a little girl growing up in Oak Ridge during the top-secret Manhattan Project. She remembers asking what was going on inside the huge plants. The answer was that they were “making little red wagons, just like the one you have.”
Vasquez’s charming new children’s book is called Making A Little Red Wagon. According to Amazon’s review, “It is a heartwarming tale inspired by Oak Ridge that celebrates collaboration and the importance of everyone’s contribution.” The book introduces children 3 to 7 to basic concepts of science and history and how with teamwork they can solve problems and create some remarkable things.
LOVE AND DESTRUCTION ON BIKINI ATOLL
Michael J. Lydakis’s new novel Bikini (2024) takes place in July 1946 on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands as the US conducts its first atomic tests. This historical fiction tells the story of an unlikely couple unknowingly involved in military operations, with gripping details about the impact of the nuclear weapons tests. The following comments are from AHF’s Advisory Committee member David Wargowski.
“I enjoyed reading this book very much…Bikini captures the life and times of post-World War II military survivors (mostly US Navy) coupled with an emerging love story on Bikini Atoll…Hopefully, individuals who read this book will want to learn more about Operation Crossroads and nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands….
“The account of the Crossroads Able detonation was fantastic. Down to earth and chillingly descriptive, it reminded me of when I saw my first nuclear detonation on the television in 1957. I was horrified. To me the mushroom cloud looked like the face of the devil… A must read.”
NUCLEAR MUSEUM NEWS
The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History’s President and CEO Jennifer Hayden (above) proudly points out the names of the dozens of sponsors who helped support the new Museum Artifact Center.
The Museum Artifact Center or “MAC” is now ready to store more than 120 artifacts from the Nuclear Defense Heritage Collection formerly at the Kirtland Air Force Base. The collection includes declassified nuclear weapons, handling equipment, and deployment systems. It’s a treasure trove for students, researchers, and others interested in the Manhattan Project and Cold War. For more information, click here.
Since June 2019, the Atomic Heritage Foundation has partnered with the Museum and its first-class team who are now the stewards of AHF’s websites, documentary photographs, and artifacts. We look forward to continuing a very productive relationship.