In 1953, President Eisenhower delivered a speech called “Atoms for Peace” to the United Nations General Assembly. He described the emergence of the atomic age and the weapons of mass destruction that were piling up in the storehouses of the American and Soviet nations. Although neither side was aiming for global destruction, Eisenhower wanted to “move out of the dark chambers of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls of men everywhere, can move towards peace and happiness and well-being.” One way Eisenhower hoped this could happen was by transforming the atom from a weapon of war into a useful tool for civilization.

Many people believed that there were unprecedented opportunities for peaceful nuclear applications. These included hopeful visions of atomicpowered cities, cars, airplanes, and rockets. Nuclear power might also serve as an efficient way to generate electricity in space to support life and machines.

Eisenhower wanted to provide scientists and engineers with “adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas.” But, in attempting to devise ways to use atomic power for peaceful purposes, scientists realized how little they knew about the nature and effects of radiation. As a result, the United States began constructing nuclear test reactors to enable scientists to conduct research by producing neutrons.

American scientists and engineers carried out the “atoms for peace” initiative at the nearly 200 research and test reactors built in the 1950s and 1960s. These types of reactors are very different from power reactors, which are built to produce power by converting radioactive heat into electricity.

In contrast, research and test reactors are used for scientific and technical investigations. Research reactors help engineers design experiments and build better reactors, while test reactors generate powerful radiation fields that enable scientists to study how materials respond to radioactive environments.

Though commercial and academic institutions built some research and test reactors, the government supported the large majority of them. One of the most powerful in the world was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) test reactor, located at Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, near Lake Erie. From 1961 to 1973, this reactor was home to some of the most advanced nuclear experimentation in the United States. Engineer A. Bert Davis said of the work at Plum Brook, “We were young and eager and we felt like we were pushing back the frontiers of science.”3 The Plum Brook reactor became NASA’s nuclear frontier—the boundary between what was known and unknown about the effects of radiation on materials.

This book is a visual history of the Plum Brook reactor, including numerous images and captions, a narrative history, and selected primary documents.

It begins with the acquisition of the Plum Brook farmland by the government at the start of World War II and discusses its use as a significant ordnance works for the war effort. At the same time, scientists worldwide were making tremendous progress on a roughly fifty-year investigation of the mysterious world inside the atom and the enormous reserve of power it appeared to contain. This work culminated in the atomic bomb. After the war, as Plum Brook’s ordnance factories went silent, scientists continued their pursuit of nuclear knowledge by constructing test reactors. One specific aim for this research in the 1950s was to build a nuclear-powered airplane. To support this effort, in 1956 NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), began to design and build a massive test reactor at Plum Brook.

By the time the reactor was completed in 1961, President Kennedy had suspended the nuclear aircraft program for safety and technical reasons. However, in its place he advocated an even bolder plan—a nuclear rocket. The Plum Brook Reactor Facility became one of the primary research facilities to test materials for this rocket. Working with contractors from Lockheed, Westinghouse, General Dynamics, and General Electric, scientists and engineers conducted ground breaking nuclear experiments. ... (From Intoduction)

Download NASA’s Nuclear Frontier: The Plum Brook Reactor Facility, 1941—2002

PDF format, 7MB, 200Pages. Provided by NASA.

By Mark D. Bowles and Robert S. Arrighi

Monographs in Aerospace History Series
Number 33, August 2004

NASA History Division
Office of External Relations
NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC 20546

Contents:
List of Images ................................................................................................................................ v
Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1
Obtaining the Land ....................................................................................................................... 9
The Dream of a Flying Reactor ..................................................................................................... 23
Designing the Plum Brook Reactor .............................................................................................. 33
Constructing the Reactor ............................................................................................................... 47
Kennedy’s New Dream .................................................................................................................. 65
Plum Brook’s Nuclear Facilities .................................................................................................... 73
The Plum Brook Reactor Opens Its Doors ................................................................................... 97
The Experimental Program ........................................................................................................... 101
Plum Brook Station Test Facilities ................................................................................................ 117
Plum Brook Station Social Activities ............................................................................................ 123
Mothballing the Reactor ............................................................................................................... 129
Returning the Land ........................................................................................................................ 143
Endnotes ....................................................................................................................................... 157
Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 161
Timeline.................................................................................................................................. 162
Reactor Experiments ............................................................................................................... 165
Reactor Cycle Dates................................................................................................................. 178
Organizational Charts ............................................................................................................ 180
About the Authors ......................................................................................................................... 185
NASA History Monographs .......................................................................................................... 186

About the Authors:

Mark D. Bowles received his B.A. in Psychology (1991) and M.A. in History (1993) from the University of Akron. He earned his Ph.D. in the History of Technology and Science (1999) from Case Western Reserve University. He was the Tomash Fellow (1997–98) from the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota. From 1996 to 2004 he was a principal at History Enterprises, Inc., where he coauthored three books with Dr. Virginia Dawson. These included Taming Liquid Hydrogen (2004), a history of the Centaur upper stage rocket, which the American Institute of Aeronautics honored with its 2004 History Manuscript Award. Dr. Bowles has also written Our Healing Mission (2003), a history of Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut.

He is currently vice president and principal at Tech Pro, Inc., and he continues to write books on aviation and aerospace history. He has been married to his wife Nancy for fourteen years. They are raising their three-year-old daughter Isabelle. 

Robert Arrighi is an archivist for InDyne, Inc. at the NASA Glenn Research Center supporting the History Office and the Imaging Technology Center.

He received his B.A. in History (1997) from Cleveland State University and M.A. in Library and Information Science (2001) from Kent State University. At Kent State, he prepared the Staughton Lynd Collection for the Department of Special Collections and Archives. From 1998–2001 he worked on a number of archival projects for History Enterprises, Inc., which include the Davey Tree Co., Temple Tifereth Israel, Huron Road Hospital, Matrix Essentials, and the National Institutes of Health. Between 2001–03, he worked on a project archiving NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor Facility documents and identifying artifacts.

During this period, Arrighi cowrote the accompanying documentary script and served as a consultant for the many facets of the reactor historical preservation project. He began working with InDyne, Inc. in June 2003.

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