The Atomium at Expo 1958: Nuclear Optimism

This card depicts the "Atomium", the symbol of Expo 58, the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, the first such fair since World War II.  As described on the Atomium's website,  the structure "symbolised the democratic will to maintain peace among all the nations, faith in progress, both technical and scientific and, finally, an optimistic vision of the future of a modern, new, super-technological world for a better life for mankind. The peaceful use of atomic energy for scientific purposes embodied these themes particularly well and, so, that is what determined the shape of the edifice." The structure is 102 metres high and represents an elementary iron crystal. Engineer André Waterkeyn and architects André and Jean Polak contributed to the design. Although intended to be disassembled after the fair, the Atomium has survived and been refurbished, much like other exposition icons like the Eiffel Tower and the Unisphere from the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

Among the national and industrial exhibits at the fair (I love that there were pavilions for chocolate - after all this is Belgium -- and tobacco), Westinghouse had an exhibition which included a model reactor, depicted on this card. On the reverse the card states that the reactor will be completed between 1960 and 1962, and will be used at the Yankee plant in the U.S. (Yankee Rowe in Massachusetts) and the SELNI plant in Italy.

Got a light?

Here are a couple matchbooks put out by Consumers Power Company to promote their two nuclear plants: the early Big Rock Point plant, a small 67 MWe General Electric Boiling Water Reactor in northern Michigan that operated from 1962 -1997, and the still operating Palisades Nuclear Plant, a 778 MWe plant of Combustion Engineering design, in South Haven Michigan. Palisades received its operating license in 1971 and a renewed license in 2007 for 20 additional years of operation beyond the original license term.

During my first years at the NRC I worked on what was then the largest civil penalty case brought against an operator -- a $450,000 fine (penalties in 1980 were allowed up to $5000 per day per violation) against Consumers Power for not properly isolating a line after a maintenance operation which could thereby compromise containment integrity in case of an accident, a condition not discovered for over a year. Compare that to the $155, 000 penalty assessed on the operator of Three Mile Island 2 after the 1979 accident! The case was settled for half the proposed penalty.

 And here's another gem -- a cigarette lighter from Northern States Power in Minnesota.  This probably depicts the Monticello Plant, the first reactor built by NSP (now under Xcel Energy), though the artist's depiction doesn't quite match what you find you see in modern photographs.

Let's light up with nukes!

Nuclear Power - No thanks?

A popular anti-nuke symbol became a picture of a smiling sun with a simple message - Nuclear Power? No thanks! The symbol supposedly originated in Denmark in the mid-1970s. The simple button was reproduced in any number of languages. Here's a postcard in Italian --

 And a more graphic sheet of stickers from Germany --

Arco, Idaho - First city lit by nuclear energy

Arco, Idaho, takes credit as being the first city lit by nuclear generated electricity. Near the town was the site of the National Reactor Testing Station, established in 1949 by the Atomic Energy Commission, and now the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.  The lab conducted many early experiments with reactor designs, including the BORAX experiments on early boiling water reactor technology. On July 17, 1955, one of the BORAX reactors (III) was used to provide electricity to Arco, the first reactor in the world to power a city.  

One of the BORAX reactors was a forerunner to the SL-1 reactor at the lab, an experimental US Army reactor that experienced a steam explosion and meltdown in 1961 which killed three persons in an event that raised speculation about possible murder/suicide linked to the accident.

This other card from Arco seems to have added its nuclear history as an afterthought. 

It's mostly about portraying Native Americans - in a rather politically incorrect way by today's standards!

The LaCrosse Six Pack

I'm featuring two cards today from La Crosse, Wisconsin, home of one of the early AEC turnkey projects and the home of the world's largest six pack. The La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor (LACBWR) was an early demonstration project built by Allis-Chalmers and ultimately licensed to Dairyland Power Cooperative. It was a small 50 Mw plant (also known as the Genoa #2 plant) that began operation and ultimately shut down in 1987. The card shows the LACBWR with its dome in the center and a coal fired plant to its left.

The card above shows the reactor along the Mississippi River in the beautiful Coulee region of Wisconsin. I spent  time in La Crosse in the early 1980s representing the NRC in an enforcement hearing related to the capability of the plant to withstand seismic events, particularly soil liquefaction in the event of an earthquake larger than the plant's original design basis. So what's that have to do with a six pack?

La Crosse was a great beer  -- and bar -- town.  G.Heileman, once a major brewer in the Midwest (I sipped a few Old Styles at a couple Cubs games), had a brewery in La Crosse which featured, as the back of this card says, the "World's Largest Six Pack".  During a break in our preparations for the hearing, we visited the brewery, sampled some of the product, and from the top of the brewery building observed the reactor several miles south of town.  We were happy to learn that the six pack (the krausening tanks for Old Style beer) pictured here would provide one person a six pack a day for 3,351 years! Heileman, like the La Crosse reactor, have passed away,  though the six pack survives under a new operator, City Brewing, that has connections to the old Latrobe Brewery in Pennsylvania and to Boston Beer (Sam Adams). Cheers!

Atomic Hollywood

This is one of my favorite cards - an oversized view of the General Atomics facility near San Diego, California, made much more interesting by the note written on the back recounting a celebrity party attended by the writer, an AEC employee in the late 1950s.  General Atomic was then a division of General Dynamics and the developer of the Triga reactor.  The picture is of the John Jay Hopkins laboratory.

The card's reverse has a note sent to Jo Sobel in D.C. from "Jeannine", both apparently AEC employees in 1957 when the card is postmarked.  Jeannine recounts some off the job adventures, including a visit to the local track in Del Mar and going to a party at the Turf Club.  She writes, "Never did I think that I would be rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood crowd, such as Victor Mature, Jimmy Durante, Betty Grable & Harry James (they had a horse running in the sixth) Lucy Ball & Desi Arnaz, Hoagy Carmichael & Arthur Godfrey who happened to be in town." Jeannine also notes the move of the AEC to Germantown, Maryland, where the Department of Energy (successor to the promotional side of the AEC) still has facilities.

I picked up this card off eBay from a woman who was apologetic for its condition, but I've never seen it elsewhere.  For a number of years, the NRC worked to get the spent fuel from the facility moved to storage with DOE, something we were able to finally accomplish in 2010.

Election Day

OK, folks, I'm breaking from the nuclear energy theme and urging you all to get out there and vote tomorrow if you haven't already.

I picked up this card at an event for Americans in Paris a few weeks ago. I dropped our ballots in the mail Friday during a brief return to the States to visit family in Massachusetts. I return to Paris Tuesday evening and probably won't know the results til I get off the plane at DeGaulle Wednesday morning.

Pilgrim Plant on Cape Cod Bay

I am back in the states for a few days visiting family in the Boston area. They live just outside the Emergency Planning Zone near the Pilgrim Plant, a General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor operating since 1972 and now the only operating nuclear plant in Massachusetts.  Originally operated by Boston Edison Co., the plant is now owned and operated by Louisiana-based Entergy Corp. The operating license was renewed earlier in 2012 after resolution of a number of challenges. Pilgrim had its ups and downs in the 1980s when equipment and management problems resulted in a prolonged plant shutdown. FEMA also identified emergency planning deficiencies that had to be addressed at a time when Governor Dukakis' administration was actively fighting the licensing of the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire on emergency planning grounds and seemed to follow a policy of benign neglect at Pilgrim.

We used to take the kids up to Massachusetts for summer holidays and walked Green Harbor and Duxbury Beaches and could see the plant across Plymouth Harbor in the distance.

A number of local citizens and advocacy groups were active in the restart proceedings in the late 1980s when I worked for Commissioner and then Chairman Carr. Carr appeared at a congressional field hearing in Plymouth after an inspector general report criticized the NRC staff's handling of some restart issues. Perhaps demonstrating best that there is room for mutual respect across varying viewpoints on nuclear energy, one of the local activists to this day sends Admiral Carr flowers on his birthday. 

Do you know where your nukes are?

Here's a varied set of cards that draw attention to where nuclear facilities are - or will be -- located.  Some seem to favor the benefits of nuclear energy, others are intended to jolt you into awareness of that nuke in your backyard.  The first is a 1960's US card pointing out planned nuclear plants:  note the quote on the back: "Atomic power has youth, glamor and substance." Wow!

Others want to remind you that there are nukes in your neighborhood. What's that doing for you? Are you worried? Should you be?

This one was put out by the Anti-Nuclear Campaign headquartered in Sheffield, England,  and suggests "You don't have to be an expert to know what's wrong with nuclear power."

Even in heavily nuclear France, some cards seem to want you to question the prevailing nuclear norm:

And this one from 1984  invites you to explore the nuclear Rhone Valley:

As the reverse says, the Rhone Valley has the largest nuclear concentration in the world!

Finally we have this late 1980s card from Sweden which I originally thought was a protest card, but based on a crude translation, seems to be saying, "What are you worried about"?

As best I can tell, the reverse of the card quotes a Swedish government report that says electrical demand is growing and suggests that the Chernobyl accident doesn't give rise to a rejection of nuclear power.

It leaves us with the question: will Sweden really be safer without nuclear power? I guess we're supposed to look at all those other nuke spots on the map of Europe and not feel so bad about living in Sweden!