INL celebrates anniversary of landmark study

It’s called the Experimental Breeder Reactor II or the EBR-II for short. It was a revolutionary reactor that was able to shut itself down completely, without human intervention, in the case of an emergency.

“It’s the landmark, and it’s known as that all over the world,” said Charles Till, the former Nuclear Reactor Program Director at the laboratory. “When things happen like Fukashima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, that reactor (EBR-II) would have ridden through all of those three and just fine and shut itself down.”

In honor of the reactor’s final shutdown, many former researchers celebrated the anniversary at the INL. Some of the retired scientists say they thought back to their researching days when the reactor was still in operation.

“There was a small group of people working. So we all worked closely together so we were friends, co-workers, and it was quite an accomplishment what they were doing with the EBR-II reactor technology,” said Nancy Steward, a retired nuclear safety analyst and environmental engineer.

Some of the technology invented during the development phase of the EBR-II reactor is still relevant today. INL leaders believe some of it will even play a part in future nuclear energy technology in the U.S.

“The understanding of how the fuels and materials behave, but also the sodium fast reactor technology that was a part of the reactor is one of the advanced concepts that you’ll see in the future,” said Mark Peters, the director of the INL.

Another part of today’s celebration was getting the younger generation of scientists to meet with some of the original researchers to learn what it was like creating the new technology. “We’ll be able to translate that into creating the nuclear future,” said Peters.