EBR-1

EBR-1

On to Jackson Hole to meet Kyle.

But, first, as we were driving through the hours and hours of flat potato fields of Idaho, staring at the big fluffy clouds in the big blue sky, we passed a sign that read: 'EBR-1 Atomic Museum'. We both looked at each other, like, was that a mirage? It was so random. As we were still debating whether we had read it correctly, we passed another sign that read: 'Idaho National Laboratory, Expiremental Breeder Reactor Entrance'. What the. . .

Nicole pulled out her Droid and asked it about EBR-1 Atomic Museum. The first google result was an article from ABC news, published exactly 41 minutes previous. The article said that it was a cool thing to do, to visit EBR-1, the nation's first power plant to generate electricity from nuclear power. Now part of a larger nuclear power research campus set in the middle of barren fields, far away from cities in case of any 'accidents', the EBR-1 was open for us to visit. Hell yeah; we hung a right at the only intersection we had seen for miles, and went in.

Some of you know that our family has a bit of experience with nuclear power. Mary Lou's ex-husband, Nicole's father, has had a long career working at the James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant in Oswego, NY. He has been the Electrical Maintenance Chief for quite some time now. When Nicole and Kyle were very small, he used to be able to bring them every once and a while, for "Take Your Kid to Work" day. They don't do that anymore. Also, both Nicole and Kyle have been able to work at the power plant, during their bi-annual refueling shutdowns. Working as Utility Technicians, they received Nuclear Regulatory Clearance for plant access, to be able to go in the reactor building to work. Hanging lead sheets in work areas, wearing contamination suits to clean up stray contamination, or putting on respirator suits to go in and clean the drywall: they both worked 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week during the outage.

So, the museum was of special interest to us, and it was a trip back in time to see the control room as it was in the 1950's. The turbines and the generator were ridiculously small, compared to ones we had worked around. And the electricity from the generator was channeled to light up 5 lightbulbs hanging from a wire. But there were some familiar sights, notably a sign reading: 'Practice Good Housekeeping: A Place for Everything and Everything in Place.'

The most fun, though, were the radiation enclosure boxes. You know, that glass box with the rubber gloves sticking in the sides, where you can reach in and open test tubes. And, using the same joystick/mechanical arm like mechanism that they used to handle radioactive material with, Mary Lou pretended to pick up (her lost) marbles and drop them into a container, and Nicole tried to screw nuts onto bolts.

We took lots of pictures, for all our 'nucular' friends.


Click here for the photos!