#sl-1

SCAN AND REMASTERED by Dan Beaumont: link

"Artist's rendering shows how Command Service Module (CSM) will dock with the Orbiting Workshop (OWS) during the Skylab mission. Assisting in the docking is the VHF Ranging System designed and built by RCA Government Communications Systems, Camdem, N.J. The system provides the CMS pilot with the range between the two spacecraft. Ranging is performed by sending radio tones from the CSM to the workshop, which retransmits them to the CSM. The range is determined by measuring the time between the transmission of the tones and receipt of the OWS retransmitted."

Date: May 12, 1973

So, I’m reading about SL-1, so you will be subject to that today. Buckle up!

The SL-1 (stationary low-power reactor #1) was a boiling water reactor at the Army base located in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which was the home to many other Army reactors. It exploded on January 3rd, 1961 and killed it’s three operators.

I am learning most of the facts about this accident by reading Atomic America by Todd Tucker. This book talks about how the Navy’s success in building nuclear submarines (spearheaded by Admiral Hyman Rickover) created the fear that the Army would become obsolete if it did not convert to nuclear power. SL-1 and similar types of reactors would eventually be used to power remote army bases.

There are a couple of notable ways the Army really, really fucked up.

Like the nuclear reactor for the submarine, SL-1 had to adhere to some very strict guidelines that are not really standard of other reactors because they have to fit inside something. Size is an issue, it has to be able to be assembled on site, etc etc etc.

So, the fuck-ups.

1. SL-1 was a boiling water reactor, as opposed to a pressurized water reactor. Most nuclear reactors today are PWRs, because they’re safer. PWRs operate with a two-loop system. Even though the water inside is heated to well above its boiling point, the immense pressure inside the reactor keeps it in liquid form so that the reactor components are always coated with water. But, notably, the water does not touch the fuel or anything. Here is a photo.

This prevents the steam that’s eventually released from becoming radioactive. But, it requires a lot more equipment, space, money, etc. this is the kind of reactor they used to build the nuclear submarine.

A BWR is a single loop system in which the water is basically pumped straight into the reactor core to be used as a coolant, and when it evaporates because of the heat, that radioactive steam is directly used to power a turbine.

The layout of this reactor was also…hm…bad. Like I get it, nuclear power for energy and not just destruction was relatively new. Gotta learn from something. But Jesus fucking Christ.

There were only five control rods, or reaction moderators, which is suitable for a reactor that small. But the way the fuel channels were organized, close to the center, it gave the control rod in the middle WAAAAY more power than the other four combined. All of the control rods also had a history of sticking inside the reactor, because the channels were lined with boron strips which were designed to moderate electron flow (and prevent the reaction from getting out of control), but the tack they were put on with started to fail almost immediately, and the boron started to flake off and melt, which actually made the core more radioactive because the “poison” was no longer there as a built in reaction moderator.

There was also no containment building.

AND! To top all this off. The reactor was started by manually lifting that super-powerful control rod to start the reaction. But y’know. If you’re off by even an inch, the reaction runs away, because the design of this reactor was SO BAD

So. Yeah. Our boy Jack Byrnes lifted the control rod. The reaction was critical in 380 milliseconds (criticality is the aim, just a self-sustaining-enough reaction to generate power). He pulled somewhat more than what was required. The reactor immediately enters prompt criticality (BAD, a self-sustaining UNMODERATED reaction). All the water in the bottom of the reactor instantly flashes into steam, which propels all the water on top up into the lid at something like 10k pounds/sq in of force. One of the control rod plugs impales Richard Legg, who had been standing on the reactor lid, through the groin, and comes out his shoulder, which pins him to the ceiling.

Byrnes and Legg are dead. McKinley, the third operator and the newest and youngest there, is critically injured, but effectively doomed. The force of the steam explosion was what killed them, and it was so powerful that the many-ton reactor that had been literally welded into the ground jumped nine feet.

It takes six days to get Richard Legg off the ceiling, because the ensuing meltdown produced so much radiation that workers could not stay in the room longer than a minute without exceeding their yearly radiation dose limit. In that entire time, his body is so radioactive that it doesn’t decay at all.

That being said.

Tobias Buckell, I have a huge fossilized bone to pick with you.

In the book Envoy, it's mentioned that a HAVOK thermonuclear device has been repurposed by colonists to power their settlement, and is then repurposed again to power an EMP. I haven't read the book, and the synopsis on the Wiki was sparse, so apologies if I got the details wrong; it won't affect what I'm gonna say.

Portraits of all three Skylab Astronaut crews.

The Skylab Airlock flight article 2 lower deploy assembly being loaded into the Guppy, in front of McDonnell Douglas Blg 66 ready, to be transported to the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Date: March 22, 1971