Abstract
Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident by William McKeown, ECW Press, 2003, 269 pages; $16.95
The technical details of the explosion that occurred on January 3, 1961, at the SL-1 nuclear research reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho, have been well documented. In Proving the Principle, a history of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Susan Stacy sums up the basic sequence of events before and after the accident.
While a three-man crew was completing routine preparations for the restarting of the “low-power” reactor, the central control rod (which regulated the activity of the reactor core) was pulled out too far. The reactor went “prompt critical” and exploded. “It released so much heat energy in four milliseconds that it flashed the water surrounding the fuel to steam,” Stacy wrote. “The entire [pressure] vessel jumped nine feet in to the air, hit the ceiling, and thumped back into place, shearing all of its connections to the piping and instrumentation systems.”
Two of the men died instantly–one pinned to the ceiling of the reactor building by a plug from the reactor shield. The third man died shortly after his highly radioactive body was rescued from the floor next to the top of the reactor.
The exact circumstances that led to the control rod being pulled out too far have been much more difficult to ascertain–the only witnesses to the explosion all died, and there were no video or audio recordings of what happened. To the community of nuclear workers at the atomic outpost in Idaho and to nuclear industry insiders, the incident posed a tantalizing question: Was the control rod removed by accident–or was it on purpose? As details about the technical aspects of the explosion and the theories of investigators became known, rumors began to circulate about what really happened that night. One of the most colorful rumors alleged that there had been a “love triangle” involving two of the men, and that perhaps flared emotions were at the root of the explosion.
“The love-triangle story would pass from old hand to new, embellished here, spiced up there…. The strange story of SL-1 became salacious amusement, a lunch-hour whodunit, even a cautionary tale to new nuclear workers,” writes veteran reporter William Mc-Keown in Idaho Falls, the most recent investigation into the events surrounding the explosion. But was the rumor true? The final report issued by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)-appointed investigative committee in 1962 described the accident as stemming from “involuntary performance of the individual manipulating the [control] rod as a result of unusual or unexpected stimulus, or malperformance motivated by emotional stress or instability.” That phrase was cryptic enough to hint at “dark things,” McKeown says.
“This parallel universe theory is interesting, Dave, tell me more.”
McKeown traces the vague suggestions contained in the final report to an earlier report completed by an AEC inspector named Leo Miazga. The contents of Miazga's report made it clear that investigators were indeed looking deep into the personal lives of the men on duty the night of the explosion for clues as to why the central control rod had been lifted to such a dangerous height. But Miazga's report was inconclusive.
Believing that maybe Miazga or the other investigators missed or were hiding something, McKeown attempted to reconstruct a more complete account of events. He interviewed relatives and coworkers of the victims, as well as a number of personnel involved in the investigation, hoping to uncover further details about what led to the explosion.
Although he builds adequate psychological sketches of the men working at the reactor on the night of January 3, and cobbles together a convincing narrative of the fledgling nuclear program they were part of, a clearer picture of the circumstances that led to the explosion fails to appear. McKeown does succeed, however, in exposing (and demonstrating) how it was possible for the wealth of rumors and speculation to gain so much momentum.
“If there were a treasure map for the mysterious saga of SL-1, Miazga's report would mark the spot. It may be the well-spring of all the rumors and speculation,” he writes.
More important, perhaps, than the precise motivations of the men who died in the explosion, the incident introduced to the investigators, the nuclear industry, and the public the possibility that a worker at a nuclear reactor could sabotage operations. The central control rod regulated approximately 80 percent of the SL-1 reactor, according to the site's medical director at the time of the explosion, which made the reactor particularly vulnerable to both accidental and purposeful misuse.
At the very least, the explosion forced the AEC to address the reactor's design flaws, Stephan Hanauer, a nuclear safety expert, told McKeown. “We'll never know if one guy pulled a rod on purpose or if he knew it would blow the plant up or if that was his intention,” Hanauer said. “But the plant ought to be resistant to the more obvious schemes.”
As the list of “obvious schemes” has changed over time, one hopes that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the AEC successor, has learned a lesson from the past.