Digitization of historical films about Nebraska's pioneering Hallam Sodium Graphite Reactor.

We’re excited to announce the world “re-premier” of two historic videos about Nebraska’s pioneering nuclear power experience with the Hallam Nuclear Power Facility at the Sheldon Power Station.

The Nebraska Public Power District has generously sponsored the digitization of two early 1960s films about the historic Hallam Nuclear Power Facility just south of Lincoln, NE. The films were sitting on 16mm film at the National Archives for the past 60 years, and thanks to NPPD, are now right here on the internet. Extra special thanks to John McClure, who drove me down to Sheldon Station during the 2021 Nebraska Advanced Reactor Forum and supported getting these resources digitized, and to Scott Margheim for coordinating the digitization efforts.

To celebrate these videos, we just added a new page briefly summarizing the Hallam story, and explaining what’s so cool about sodium graphite reactors. In summary, they can produce high-temperature heat (good for efficiency and industrial needs), with low-pressure liquid metal sodium (good for emergency cooling without backup power) without requiring above ~4% enrichment. The SGR is a nearly-forgotten super-capable reactor that has significant operational experience. Hopefully these videos will help us remember them.

The second film contains mostly the same footage as the first, but in a condensed version.

Independently of whatisnuclear.com, NPPD also digitized two other Hallam videos that are well worth watching:

Contents of the first film by timestamp include:

00:00 Film noise 00:23 Introduction 01:45 Intro credits 02:12 Description of buildings 03:00 Construction 04:00 Other liquid metal reactors 04:27 Sodium Reactor Experiment 04:55 Contracting, siting, groundbreaking 05:18 Description of nuclear 05:40 Integration of coal and nuclear sides 06:37 Animations of core and plant 07:55 More construction 09:20 Vessel support and transport 11:16 Containment and piping 12:10 Core internals, graphite moderators 13:49 Top shield head 14:18 Fuel elements 15:36 QA testing and control systems 16:33 Intermediate loop and steam generators 18:20 Turbine-generator and substation 19:01 Fuel handling 21:44 Test program and criticality 23:00 Outro

In other exciting news, NPPD has also been scanning photos from the Sheldon Station office showing the construction and operation of the Hallam reactor in even more thrilling detail. They have already sent us hundreds of photos from the Hallam decommissioning. More to come on that!

This digitization effort kicked off after we found out about the existence of the Hallam videos in a film catalog linked on our ZPPR video page. There are lots more like this still.

See Also:

• Our Digital Reactor History Museum
• Our Old Videos page with a running list of the available and yet-to-be-scanned films out there. If you’re interested in helping to get some of these scanned, check out our digitization GoFundMe and/or contact us!
• Hallam SGR photos