When Ray Haroldsen, a Bonneville County native and electrical engineer, flipped a switch at about 11 p.m. July 17, 1955, at BORAX III, world nuclear power for peaceful use established a notable landmark. That's when nuclear power streamed over the lines to light up Arco, a forerunner of the nuclear power generated in much of the world today. As Haroldsen recalled it, some 500 kilowatts went to Arco, 500 to the BORAX facilities and 1,000 to Central Facilities.
Even today, Arco boasts it is the first city in the world to be lit by atomic power. BORAX, of which there were eventually five, was the classified name given to the Boiling Reactor Experiment. "The idea for the experiment grew out of an unplanned nuclear excursion that happened at a critical assembly at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois," said Haroldsen. In 1952 at Chicago's ANL, one of the operators of the critical assembly (a zero-power mockup of the reactor for the first nuclear submarine), without thinking, manually yanked a control rod out of the critical assembly. The result was a nuclear excursion that caused an explosive steam bubble to form in the bottom of the critical assembly.
At the first operation of BORAX in June 1955, there followed a series of transient experiments in which the BORAX reactor was purposely slugged with excess reactivity, causing spectacular geyser-like eruptions from the top of the reactor tank. "These streams of water reached between 50 and 150 feet high," said Haroldsen. "In fact, there were humorous reports from startled tourists traveling on Highway 26 claiming that they had seen something like Old Faithful erupting on the horizon in the Arco desert."
Next was a rush to locate a suitable steam turbine generator to connect BORAX. One was wanted to run on wet steam, not the widely used new dry steam model. It was found in an abandoned state at a remote sawmill near Albuquerque, New Mexico, of 3.75 megawatts which had been manufactured by Westinghouse in 1925, and barely acceptable. It was a contrast that such a decrepit generator was used to help boost power to the nuclear age, Haroldsen mused. "Here we were, the forefront of knowledge, trying to get the old 1925 turbine going," said Haroldsen.
Utah Power and Light employees gave their help, and without them, said Haroldsen, lighting Arco would have been almost impossible. They found a desperately needed transformer in a stockyard near Central Facilities. It was loaded on a Morrison Knudsen-Ferguson flatbed truck, hauled to BORAX and wired without unloading. "It was a transmission line that caused the lighting of Arco to be delayed about two days," said Haroldsen. "We also lost about as much sleep. Engineers blew out several lines before successfully lighting the town. Those two sleepless days are something we will always remember."
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED