So we loaded up the wagon ………..With our ebikes attached, Negra Modelo in the frig, open highway, each other, and good weather, we jumped into Camper Van Diesel (CVD) for a quick trip to the Wood River Valley. (For the record, CVD is not an electric vehicle, but the bikes on the back of that big horse are powered by electro chemical batteries). 
Wood Valley is what the locals call it. For those of us who are unenlightened, it’s simply Sun Valley, a cozy little ski town in the middle of Idaho. It’s about a 15 hour drive from Boulder, CO, depending on how advanced your ADD is, and in my case, it’s prodigious. I am the squirrel. Which is why we couldn’t not stop at the world’s first Experimental Breeder Reactor -Nuclear Power Plant located in……the middle of absolutely nowhere. Well, it’s a few miles from McGhee’s Atomic Bar, if that helps. And not far from the Craters of the Moon. I hope that clarifies it for you. But even with specific directions, it just appears like a mirage, or an atomic apparition and calls like a siren to lost sailors.
Fission, Fusion, and the Future; Lessons from the Past
I guess if you’re going to have a nuclear reactor maybe it makes sense to put it “out there”. Splitting atoms is one of those NIMBY things. But when you see this place, you might actually want it there because it’s mind bending-ly interesting. It all started in the back yard of Enrico Fermi who theorized that a radioactive isotope, U235 (pretty rare stuff) could be used to enrich another isotope (U238 – the common stuff that’s been mined for decades) and because the latter is “stable” compared to the former, it would absorb or deflect those U235 neutrons and turn into U239…….which as we all know, decays rapidly into Plutonium (239, if your counting). Thus, creating more usable fuel than was available in the first place. How much? Oh, about 27% more, or 1.27 atoms of the PU for every atom of U, which is why they call it a ‘breeder’ because it makes its own fuel. Now that’s an ROI worth thinking about. By the way, don’t hold me to any of that physics since I am simply reporting what I was told.
So why haven’t we put a breeder in every bedroom in America? Or, more to the point, can I have an atomic reactor mounted on the back of my ebike to get me up and over the next pass, and beyond? It’s not as far fetched as it sounds, but its close.
Affectionately known as EBR-1 (among those nuclear physicists and engineers who built the thing) it’s a wonderful distraction and inspiration. I was drawn to it like a neutron to a proton, or a quark to a particle retriever…. clearly, I’m out of my element here. But it was very cool to stumble-drive onto this historical and significant place and learn about electricity being made by atomic reaction – the alternative to alternative energy. Before there were EVs and BEVs and fossil fuels, there was the energy of the stars, atomic energy. It’s been around so long there’s no more than half of it left after the big bang. But still ticking, and clicking, and going the distance .
At the beginning of the cold war, experts from the US believed that the USSR had a nuclear powered airplane that could stay aloft for a week without refueling. The implications are clear enough, but it turned out not to be true. Even if it wasn’t true, the US was not to be outdone. So, the government began working on a flying nuclear spy plane that never needed to come down – except for coffee and to empty the septic tank (just like our land based CVD). The plane turned out to be too much. That’s probably what the Russians discovered as well, but it morphed into aircraft carriers and of course, submarines which could be powered with tiny fissionable atoms. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, so says Meatloaf. But why not my ebike? Or cars, trucks, tractors, trains, and buses etc. etc. It turns out that chain reactions are a little more challenging than electrolytic batteries and require some safe space to operate. Also it’s very hot, which means you’ve got to be able to cool it. Apparently, not all electrons are created equal…….
The Past is Prologue, Or Not, An Atomic Anomaly
We lurched to a full stop in the parking lot of the world’s first nuclear power plant and excitedly donned our radiation gear. Within the first few feet of entering the door I recognized something familiar, a bit about the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, the USS Nautilus which was commanded (well, he was the second in command) by my uncle, Tom Thamm.
When I was a kid, my brother and I received emblem badges from our famous uncle which were about 6 inches in diameter. We immediately sewed them on every piece of clothing we owned (this required that the badges be removed and resewn so many times that within 6 months the 6 in diameter was down to 3 and no longer readable, just an image of a submarine scope breaking water and an atomic electron shell diagram like the kind you see indicating radioactive hazard). But the story and the memory was so strong I was immediately enveloped by that warm familial connection, so I removed my radiation suit (and slipped into something a little ‘more comfortable’ (thank you Madelene Kahn)).
We toured the factory and wondered what would have happened if the nuclear movement had been more successful and instead of fossil fuels and the current shift to electric power from chemical reactions in batteries we’d be riding around with a back pack full of plutonium. Instead of copper and lithium and nickel and cadmium we’d be looking for and mining uranium and vanadium and sumathatium. Perhaps on asteroids and comets using nuclear robots and transport vehicles powered by hydrogen. Atomic power looked like a winner, at least in 1953. So what time/space event caused such a departure from what appeared to be the “perpetual” clean energy machine?
Wait A Tick -1953?
That was the year I was born……coincidence? (i don’t think so).
Outside in the parking lot, where we had parked our diesel powered (that’s so last century) beast, to our amazement, an exact replica had parked next to us. It was raining and there was standing water on the asphalt so we thought it was at first, a mirage, but an older couple like the ones we are, climbed awkwardly out of the vehicle and as we stopped to talk to them and they to us, I couldn’t help but wonder if the anomalous radiation associated with the historical atomic prototypes anchored around the world’s first nuclear power plant had created a junction for an alternative universe, a parallel existence that cosmically converged in the parking lot of EBR-1, and the bikes mounted on the front of their rig were powered by unobtainium, while ours, mounted on the back of the rig were powered by simple electro-chemical exchange. We eyed each other carefully as we passed and when I turned to say something, the old man looked back at me and said “is it fission or fusion you all use here? We need to find a fuel station.”
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