This innovation transformed the Navy’s potential reach throughout the globe. The Nautilus could go farther and longer than any previous submarine due to its nuclear-powered propulsion engine. Navy successfully launched the USS Nautilus-the first ever nuclear powered submarine-for deployment. Five years after the reactor began operation, the U.S. ![]() The atomic engine’s dual zero-emission, zero-consumption feature provided a great competitive advantage to alternative forms of nautical propulsion. Argonne National Laboratory scientists teamed up with Westinghouse Corporation contractors to use the state-of-the-art equipment available at NRTS to devise and develop the proposed nuclear-powered engine at what would be known as the “S1W” reactor in Idaho Falls. Therefore, EBR-1 proved doubly useful in that it produced electricity while simultaneously processing the fuel needed to continue electrical generation.ĭespite its identity as a non-weapons related facility, the NRTS nonetheless became inextricably linked to military development.Ī prominent example is its crucial role in the designing and testing of nuclear propulsion prototypes in order to make nuclear-powered naval vessels a possibility. Transforming U-238 into P-239 expanded the fuel potential of the reactor immensely. Since heat generated from fission is what drives electricity production in nuclear reactors, U-238 itself is useless, but the synthetic P-239 isotope can sustain fission. Despite its global abundance, the U-238 isotope is not fissionable. The reactor had the added benefit of turning previously unusable uranium-238 (a naturally occurring and plentiful isotope) into plutonium-239 (a synthetic isotope which could be used as reactor fuel). Soon after, EBR-1 was producing enough electricity to power the complex in which it was housed. When the reactor went online for the first time on December 20 th, 1951, it was the first time that the process of nuclear fission had ever led to electrical generation. Walter Zinn and his team proved that nuclear power could be harnessed to produce electricity. The success of the EBR-1 reactor designed by Dr. The promise of peaceful atomic uses juxtaposed against the determination for further military application became the dual defining characteristics of the new laboratory. These early NRTS reactors laid the foundation for the laboratory’s identity and future endeavors to come. ![]() It was also tasked with the management and disposal of nuclear waste. The Chem Plant extracted whatever U-235 might be left from a fuel cell after its use.
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