Home to EBR-I, the World's First Nuclear Power Plant
About This Tour
You can safely explore the driving portion of the tour on site and explore the museum virtually.
Have you ever seen a nuclear reactor? Ever wonder how electricity is generated from nuclear energy? Satisfy your curiosity by taking this tour of Idaho National Laboratory.
As you drive along Highway 20/26 you will see miles of high desert where the U.S. Department of Energy is leading the country’s nuclear energy research. Over the last 70-plus years at the INL Site, 52 nuclear reactors have been built to develop the science of peaceful nuclear power for the U.S. and the world. The world’s first usable quantity of electricity from splitting atoms occurred here at Experimental Breeder Reactor-One in 1951. America’s nuclear-propelled Navy was born here in 1953. And nuclear power plant safety standards used around the globe began here.
You can also explore the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 (EBR-I) Atomic Museum. The facility is a National Historic Landmark where usable electricity was first generated from nuclear energy in 1951. It’s the only place in America you can see four nuclear reactors — including two aircraft nuclear propulsion prototypes, a reactor control room, remote handling devices for radioactive materials, radiation detection equipment, and much more.
Sample Stories
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More Than Meets the Eye
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The Idaho National Laboratory Site may not look like the most hospitable of environments for any type of life. But in reality, this desert is teeming with plant and animal diversity that rivals the diversity of Yellowstone National Park. Even its geological history is still revealing itself today.
The Snake River Plain, where you are traveling right now, resulted from millions of years of geologic activity. Erupting volcanoes in this region were followed by less violent basaltic lava flows: Cracks and fissures opened in the earth’s surface, and lava flowed out, filling in low-lying areas. The result was a relatively flat plain.
South of the highway, look for three large rock formations, called buttes. They were formed by another kind of lava left over from the volcanoes. As that lava pushed to the surface through the secondary flows, it cooled and solidified. If you were to cut this plain like a piece of cake, you’d see layer upon layer of lava flows with layers of soil between them. The youngest of the secondary flows can be seen west of the INL Site at Craters of the Moon National Monument; the last flows happened about 2,000 years ago. Between the INL Site and Idaho Falls are 4,000-year-old flows called Hell’s Half Acre.
The plant and animal diversity is tremendous on this desert. Throughout the year, you can find elk, mule deer, pronghorn and an occasional moose. The predators here range from coyotes and badgers to bobcats, mountain lions, wolves and bears. There are numerous birds, including hawks, eagles and falcons. You can find reptiles of various shapes and sizes, such as the Great Basin Diamondback rattlesnake. One local toad hibernates for years between wet periods, waiting for the Big Lost River to fill an area known as the Big Lost Sinks. Not all animals are all-year-round residents, though, because of the lack of water on the desert.
Here, plant species exist that cannot be found anywhere else on the Snake River Plain. Recreational activities, farming, grazing and the growth of towns have threatened their habitat in nearby locations, but the Site is protected, and native plants still thrive. In 1975, the 890-square-mile INL property was named a National Environmental Research Park. The park provides an outdoor laboratory to study the plants and animals that make up this high-plains desert without as many human impacts on the populations of flora and fauna.
Arco and Atomic City
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Arco, Idaho, is one of the closest towns to the Idaho National Laboratory Site. When the laboratory was established in 1949, Arco residents hoped the town would be home for the offices of the Atomic Energy Commission (the federal agency charged with overseeing nuclear research for both peaceful uses and military applications). Three other towns – Pocatello, Blackfoot and Idaho Falls – also wanted to be considered. This led to competition among the four towns. In the end, Idaho Falls was selected to house the Atomic Energy Commission’s Idaho offices. A book describing the competition can be found on INL’s website, titled “Proving the Principle” by Idaho historian Susan Stacy. It sheds light on many more details about the history of the lab’s first 50 years.
Atomic City, on INL’s southern boundary, expected workers to want to live close to their jobs. The town was named Midway at the time because it was midway from Blackfoot to Arco. The 25-or-so residents of Midway voted to change their name to Atomic City to be a more a attractive community for workers of the National Reactor Testing Station. Atomic City today is about the same size as it was in 1949.
Arco was, however, the first city in the world to receive all of its electricity from nuclear power. On July 17, 1955, for about an hour in the middle of the night, a proof-of-concept reactor at INL, known as BORAX-3, provided all the electricity for Arco. Few knew about it when it happened, though. The U.S. was preparing to send representatives to Geneva, Switzerland, for one of the first Atoms for Peace conferences. The Soviet Union had claimed that all U.S.-related nuclear research was about weapons. To make a statement refuting that claim, INL researchers completed the project powering Arco with nuclear energy the month before the conference. In August 1955, U.S. representatives stood up in Geneva and proclaimed that Arco, Idaho, was the first city in the world to be entirely powered by nuclear-generated electricity.
As a side note, the Soviets in fact were the first to put nuclear-generated electricity onto a grid. Their Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant fed into a power grid but was not used to solely power a single town, so Arco’s claim to be the first completely nuclear-powered city stands.
Every summer, to commemorate this accomplishment, the city of Arco celebrates Atomic Days on the weekend closest to July 17th.
