Day 10 July 14th



When I saw the free admission sign, curiousity got the best of me.



As soon as I entered the building, this old TV from 1950 was playing.

They gave free tours, or you could take a self guided one. I took the guided one.

This was the first breeder reacter in America. The area below the plastic cover near my feet are where the fuel rods went.

In a breeder reactor, there are three isotopes of urainium utilized. U-235, U-238, and Plutonium. Because Plutonium is a weapons grade material it isn't used any more due to a worldwide agreement of some sort.

This was my tour guide and she was showing us the control panel where they monitored all of the reactors conditions. It was also where they were able to shut it down with the push of one button in an emergency

This is the turbine and generator that produced the first ever electricty from nuclear energy.

The heat created by the reactor was conducted to potassium chloride and then to water that was run through these pipes

After the steams heat was spent driving the turbine, it was condensed and recirculated back to become steam again. BTW, the steam was in the neighborhood of 500+ degrees.

This is a 1/4 scale model of the shipping container for transporting spent fuel rods.

See picture

The wall has been cut through so you can see the amount of protection surrounding the reactor.

These pipes are where the heated potassium chloride solution flows.



Fuel rod storage. Those rods are long, but the uranium portion is only about 8".



I think this was spent rod storage

These manipulators were used to handle the radioactive stuff behind 32 panes of lead glass.

A couple of other reactors that have been mothballed.

A string of about 10 VW Things drove by, but by the time I got my camera out of my pocket, this was all I got.

Just a few miles from where the reactor was.

I thought this might be owned by a VROC'r

A few pictures from Craters of the Moon National Monument

In person, you can see the flow paths, not so easy in the pic.

The devils orchard

After leaving Craters of the Moon, I rode along the Sawtooht mountain range.

Not sure if it is so named because of the sawtooth pattern along this ridge, or maybe the numerous peaks along the entire range.



Tom Miller told me about this beautiful canyon.

These may have been why he liked it so much <G>