In November 1957, staff at the Atomic Energy Commission, penned a report to the commissioners entitled “Status of Research and Development on Reactor Pressure Tubes.” If any decent-sized reactor was cooled by a gas, it needed to be held under pressure, either in a big ultra-strong pressure vessel or in tough tubes. America didn’t use tubes, only the Canadians and Soviets did. . .
David Wargowski, a retired scientist who also makes visual art out of early nuclear weapons history, has just pointed me to a fascinating short TV segment of Edward Murrow’s See It Now show (check out Wargowski’s screening on X). It’s a quasi reenactment, on December 2, 1952, of the very first reactor in Chicago ten years earlier. A microphone gets passed between various. . .
In 1994, German engineer Willy Marth penned a 191-page history of a small 20 MWe breeder reactor at the Karlsruhe laboratory south of Strasbourg near the French border. This is now one of history’s almost forgotten footnotes. In my research, I came upon a number of such “obituaries,” all tinged with a sadness you can sense from Marth’s early words: In memoriam: INTERATOMAs this report about KNK. . .
My book covers in some depth the (military) reactor fire at Windscale in rural England in October 1957. I won’t go into details here (you can read about it in Wikipedia or, better still, buy my book next year) but the hero of the day was undoubtedly Tom Tuohy, second-in-charge at the sprawling military establishment. After the accident, a small team, led by physicist William Penney, carried. . .