EBWR on the Line

"There it is," said Project Manager John West. "The EBWR is on the line." The EBWR is the Atomic Energy Commission's Experimental Boiling Water Reactor at Argonne National Laboratory 25 miles southwest of Chicago, and Congressman Carl T. Durham of North Carolina, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, had just thrown a switch that put the reactor into operation.

Argonne's new reactor will produce only a trickle of power (5,000 kw.), but it is not intended as a commercial source of electricity. The first completed of the AEC's five experimental power reactors, it was designed specifically to evaluate one of the many approaches to the problem of cheap nuclear power.

The reactor is housed in a dome-roofed steel building whose purpose is to keep radioactive matter from escaping into the air in the unlikely event of an explosion. Its nuclear core, enclosed in a thick lead and concrete shield, contains fuel elements whose active material is natural uranium and uranium slightly enriched with fissionable U-235. Among the fuel elements circulates ordinary water, which acts both as moderator (to slow neutrons down) and as a heat-absorbing agent.

When the chain reaction starts, the water boils, forming high-pressure steam as in an ordinary coal-fired boiler. The steam, which is slightly radioactive, goes directly to a turbogenerator which turns its energy into electricity. Lack of an intermediate heat-exchanger to generate nonradioactive steam is the characteristic feature of the EBWR, and one of its advantages as an economical power producer. Chief disadvantage: because of the radioactivity of the steam, the turbine, condenser and related equipment are also radioactive and must be operated by remote control.

Before the formal switch-throwing, the EBWR had been working off and on for nearly three months. Much has already been learned about its possibilities; its approach looks promising.

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