Welcome to Nuclear Update, the newsletter currently operating on reduced sleep but increased reactor output. 👶⚛️

Last week, while I was learning how to commission a much smaller (and significantly louder) reactor at home, I handed the controls to one of our long-time readers.

The response was incredible. (And apologies to everyone who commented, I haven’t had time to respond to each of you yet, but rest assured I do read every message).

One of the best parts of running Nuclear Update is realizing that many readers aren’t just here to follow how the nuclear industry is developing, they actually helped build it. Operators, instructors, analysts, engineers, the people who turned theory into electricity.

This week’s contributor is Bob Ciminel.

Bob began his nuclear career in the U.S. Navy propulsion program in the early 1960s before moving into commercial nuclear during the industry’s formative years.

He held Senior Reactor Operator licenses at multiple PWRs, served as a control room supervisor and simulator instructor for more than a decade, and later worked at both the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), helping analyze events and improve operational performance across the global fleet.

In other words, someone who has seen nuclear energy evolve from its earliest commercial days to the renaissance we’re now watching unfold.

What follows is a story that begins in a kitchen in Pittsburgh, on a winter morning in 1957, when nuclear electricity first entered the grid.

But first: this week’s trivia question:

Last week, I asked: 

Which chromosome combination is typically associated with male biological sex?

 🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ XX (25%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 XY (70%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ YY (4%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ XO (1%)

Now, let’s dive into the good stuff!💥

⚛️ When Nuclear First Turned On

December 12, 1957, did not begin as an auspicious day. It was dreary, cold, and on the way to becoming monotonous. In other words, a typical winter day in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I was 12 years old, enjoying the Christmas break from having to walk in slush to and from school. Station KDKA played on the kitchen AM radio. When the hourly news broadcast announced that the nation’s first commercial nuclear electric station was now providing power to our electrical grid, I at once looked toward the ceiling light fixture expecting to see something different about it. Nothing changed, and I never guessed that I would be running that reactor 13 years later.

Shippingport Atomic Power Station was a joint project of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Duquesne Light Company to find the feasibility of using nuclear reactors to power generating stations as part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.

Three years earlier, an identical reactor powered the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. Suffice to say that Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was intimately involved in the entire Shippingport project (there was a representative from Naval Reactors Department stationed in the control room around the clock).

Shippingport was the first reactor plant designed specifically for electric generation, but it was not the first reactor to generate electricity.

That claim to fame went to the Experimental Boiling Water Reactor, EBR-1, at the National Reactor Testing Station (now the Idaho National Laboratory) west of Idaho Falls, Idaho (where I trained on the prototype of the USS Enterprise reactor plant in 1964-65).

EBR-1 generated enough electricity to power four 200-watt incandescent light bulbs. Four years later, the BORAX-III reactor supplied all the electricity to the town of Arco, Idaho (Pop. 1,200) for two hours.

The Army’s SM-1 reactor at Fort Belvoir, Virginia connected to the civilian electrical grid on April 29, 1957, beating Shippingport by eight months, but it was a research and training facility. (Interestingly, the American Locomotive Works built the Fort Belvoir reactor. ALCO had been working on a nuclear-powered steam locomotive).

All the reactors used for electric power prior to Shippingport were military facilities. These included: PM-2A at Camp Century, Greenland, PM-3A at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, SM-1A at Fort Greely, Alaska, and MH-1A, a barge-mounted reactor at the Panama Canal.

None of these are still in operation. One other infamous plant was the 3 MWth SL-1 reactor at NRTS, which sustained a rapid power excursion (20,000 MWth) on April 13, 1961, resulting in three fatalities.

The Shippingport reactor plant produced 231 MWth, 68 Mwe gross, and 60 Mwe net, enough to power over 15,000 homes in the 1950. A new core in 1965 boosted power to 150 MWth, but the turbine-generator remained at 60 Mwe, requiring installation of a Heat Dissipation System to allow testing the core at full power.

The final core installed at Shippingport in 1977 successfully proved the feasibility of a Light Water Breeder Reactor. Soon afterwards, the authorities decommissioned and demolished the plant.

My career at Shippingport was short-lived, beginning in mid-1970 and ending in 1974 when I transferred to the Beaver Valley Power Station (Unit 1, 600 Mwe PWR) under construction next door. I started out as a Radiation Control Technician, eventually training and qualifying as a Station Operator.

The success at Shippingport inaugurated the halcyon days for commercial reactor development in the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with Dresden 1, the first commercial boiling water reactor in 1960, followed by Yankee Rowe, Indian Point 1 in 1962, and Humboldt Bay in 1963.

Shippingport proved the advantages of Zircalloy cladding, high-integrity reactor pressure vessels, and new standards in water chemistry control and radiation protection.

All that is still visible of Shippingport is a notch in the riverbank where the cooling water discharge structure was located, and a plaque at the adjacent Beaver Valley Power Station honoring the facility as a National Mechanical Engineering Historic Landmark.

-Bob Ciminel

💪Review of the Week

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research