The New Power — The Story of the National Reactor Testing Station (1965 film)
By Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E., 2023-07-04, Reading time: 4 minutes
We’re excited to announce the recent digitization of this 1965 film summarizing the test reactors and other activities of the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), known today as the Idaho National Lab (INL). This is the second of four historical nuclear films in our latest batch of 4K digitizations from 16mm film at the National Archives.
1965 US Atomic Energy Commission video about the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), known today as the Idaho National Lab (INL). Digitized by us from the National Archives (NAID 88194)
Catalog description:
Thanks to Ross Koningstein for his help in making this happen.
Some stills from the film
Read more about NRTS/INL
Contents of the film by timestamp include:
- 00:00 Intro and pioneering
- 01:14 Intro to the NRTS
- 03:18 Scarcity of fossil fuel
- 04:38 Basics of nuclear reactors
- 10:37 Different design options
- 11:56 Central facilities and contractors
- 11:56 Central facilities and contractors
- 12:40 Destructive testing and BORAX-1
- 13:50 BORAX-III and IV and V
- 14:50 SPERT (I, II, III, IV)
- 17:23 Influence on BWRs and PWRs
- 18:05 Military reactor intro
- 18:55 S1W Submarine prototype
- 19:30 A1W Large Ship Reactor
- 20:00 S5G Natural Circulation Reactor
- 20:12 Gas Cooled Reactor Experiment (GCRE)
- 20:53 Mobile Low Power Reactor (ML-1)
- 21:51 Organic Moderated Reactor Experiment (OMRE)
- 22:18 Materials Testing Reactor (MTR)
- 25:46 Advanced Reactivity Measurement Facility (ARMF)
- 26:25 Engineering Test Reactor (ETR)
- 26:54 Advanced Test Reactor (ATR)
- 29:03 Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT)
- 30:25 Test Area North (TAN) and TSF shops
- 31:40 Initial Engineering Test Facility (IET)
- 32:06 Testing of SNAP-10 space reactor
- 32:42 Safety Test Engineering Program (STEP)
- 32:52 Loss of Fluid Test (LOFT)
- 33:04 710 Research Reactor Experiment
- 33:20 Experimental Beryllium Oxide Reactor (EBOR)
- 33:44 Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP)
- 35:28 Liquid waste disposal
- 36:23 Waste Calcining Facility (WCF)
- 37:42 Experimental Breeder Reactors (EBR-I and EBR-II)
- 41:43 Thorium
- 42:15 Summary of challenges
- 42:46 Fuel Cycle Facility (FCF)
- 43:50 Bridge to fusion
These are loaded into the youtube video as chapters for your convenience.
They apparently called it Prototype Prairie (2:05)
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!
- A tweet about this announcement
About Dr. Nick Touran, Ph.D., P.E.
Nick Touran is a nuclear engineer with expertise in advanced nuclear reactor design, reactor development, and the history of nuclear power. After getting a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, he spent 15 years at TerraPower in Seattle working on core design, business development, software development, and configuration management. He is now a consultant involved in advising and assisting numerous reactor development and deployment efforts. He is also a licensed professional engineer in Nuclear Engineering.
Nick has been active in public education around nuclear since 2006 as the founder of whatisnuclear.com. He has spoken at numerous institutions, schools, and public events, and was once featured on NPR’s Science Friday. Recently, he has coordinated the digitization of over 45 historical nuclear films.
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