December 20

If I were to mention the name Arco, would the name ring any bells for you? Well, it is the name of a gasoline company but Arco is also the name of a small desert town in Idaho. Its one claim to fame (the town’s, not the gas company’s) is that it is the home of the Experimental Breeder Reactor – 1 (EBR-1) that has been designated a United States National Historic Landmark. This puts it in the company of the Statue of Liberty and slew of other landmarks, probably including the first International House of Pancakes and In and Out Burgers. Still in the dark? Let me grab a flashlight and shed a bit of light on the subject. On the 20th in 1951, at 1:50 in the afternoon, EBR-1 began to generate electricity, enough electricity, difficult though this may be to believe, to actually power four 200-watt light bulbs. ERB-1 was not only the first nuclear reactor to generate power but also the first breeder reactor, producing plutonium as a by-product. There were some problems however and on November 29, 1955, an operator error resulted in a partial meltdown of the reactor.