Atomic Museums

This review is about two museums. One you may have heard of (the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, NM) and one you haven't. Both are devoted to the early days of the Atomic Age.

We'll save Los Alamos for later. The other one isn't even called a museum, but that's what it is. Located halfway between Idaho Falls and Craters of the Moon National Monument on Highway 26, it's technically called the Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 Registered National Historic Landmark at the Idaho National Laboratory.

On December 20, 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 was fired up in Idaho, about fifty miles from Idaho Falls. The EBR-1 reactor, first of its kind, produced electricity using atomic energy. It was called a breeder because it created more plutonium-239 atoms than it consumed uranium atoms. Here's a 50-year anniversary tribute to EBR-1 from the American Nuclear Society.

The Idaho National Laboratory was once an artillery test range. In 1949, the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission built the National Reactor Testing Station there, and started the EBR-1. It became a National Lab in the 1970s, and the Batelle Institute took over its management a year or two ago.

On July 17, 1955, the reactor generated enough power to light the town of Arco for an hour or two-the first time in history a town had ever been lit by nuclear power.

EBR-1 was decommissioned in 1964..

If you find yourself in Idaho some summer between Memorial Day and Labor Day, you can tour the facility. Check their Visitor Information first. You may feel more like you've stumbled into an old 1950s Twilight Zone mad scientist skit, with all the dials and panels. You can stand over the reactor, or get under the core in the basement. Lights used in the 1951 experiments are on display, with chalkboards, log books, and a bunch of old equipment.

Outside near the parking area are two ginormous aircraft engines: prototypes that were developed under the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Project. When funding for these was cut in the very early 60s, the work was abandoned.

Now. . . Los Alamos. The Bradbury Science Museum in downtown Los Alamos, New Mexico is a must-see--If you're a fan of movies like Fat Man and Little Boy. I'll be honest: it's not that entertaining unless you're really into science. I suspect engineers love it and kids scream and yell that they want to leave.

Two-thirds of the exhibits are about nuclear power. The Manhattan Project is well represented, and there are exhibits about plutonium, nuclear stockpiles, and all sorts of stuff. A facsimile of the afore-mentioned Fat Man is on display, along with other bombs.

The non-nuclear exhibit I had the most fun with was about the human genome and how rare some of out traits are-like, cleft chins, widow's peaks, freckles, etc.

Just so nobody leaves in a jovial mood, your last stop will probably be a thought-provoking (IOW, extremely depressing) display about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The museum tries very hard to present both sides.

Both sides--what does that mean? No one believes that dropping atomic bombs is a good thing. An argument is made against the use of nuclear weapons, and a counter-argument states that the deployment was necessary and saved American lives, but no one crows about the use of the bombs.