Atomic Snapshots: Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion

Across the parking lot from the EBR-1 outside Arco, Idaho, you’ll find the decommissioned HTRE-2 and HTRE-3 in large test assemblies. These Heat Transfer Reactor Experiments were tests of nuclear propulsion in aircraft. General Electric J47 turbojet engines were modified (renamed X-39) to use heated compressed air from a heat exchanger as part of the nuclear reactor rather than from combusting jet fuel. The X-39 engines would have been used in the proposed Convair X-6.

Left to right: lead-shielded locomotive, HTRE-2, and HTRE-3.

The reactor and heat transfer system was tested on a Convair NB-36 (converted B-36 Peacemaker) with 47 recorded flights between 1955 and 1957. The reactor was turned on through many of these flights not to power the aircraft but to test and collect data on the feasibility of a sustained nuclear reaction on a moving platform.

HTRE-3. Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment 3 which had horizontal control rods to accommodate the orientation in an airframe.
HTRE-3

The HTRE-2 used vertical control rods with a removable core. The HTRE-3 was built to test horizontal control rods to accommodate the orientation in an airframe. The test assemblies were going to be decontaminated and decommissioned for burial in the Radioactive Waste Management Complex. However, preservation was chosen instead, and the assemblies went on display on May 22, 1989. This includes the lead-shielded locomotive used for the test assemblies and that would have towed the proposed planes inside the hangar.

The program was canceled on March 28, 1961, by President Kennedy, due to public safety concerns, advances in ballistic missiles, and aircraft design innovations, after spending more than a billion dollars developing the concept.

Atomic Snapshots: Mini Enrico & Leona

Originally part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Science in American Life exhibit which ran from 1994-2011, these mannequins of Enrico Fermi and Leona Woods Marshall Libby stood on a balcony overlooking a mock up of the Chicago Pile-1.

The mannequins used to greet visitors to the B Reactor at the tour headquarters in Hanford, Washington. Standing patiently at the back of the assembly room, they listened in on the history lecture and orientation meeting before visitors exited to board buses to the site.

The mannequins were acquired for the B Reactor by the Atomic Heritage Foundation for inclusion in future displays at the site. As such, Little Enrico and Little Leona were again transported to the B Reactor and wait patiently in the restroom, which is interesting since Leona was the only person to use the women’s restroom at the B Reactor. You can now visit them on your way to Enrico Fermi’s office.

Enrico Fermi and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, previously at the B Reactor Tour Headquarters, courtesy of KUOW.

Atomic Snapshots: Lamy Station, NM

Built in 1909 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the Mission Revival style, Lamy station was the southern terminus for the Santa Fe Southern Railway until 2014. Currently used by Amtrak’s Southwest Chief line, the station is 18 miles south of Santa Fe and the only way to get there by train and then a connecting bus.

Scientists arriving for work at Los Alamos by train were met at the Lamy station and escorted to 109 E Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, the gateway to the Manhattan Project and work on the hill.

Lamy station interior

The building is maintained as it looked so many years ago. Walking into the waiting area is taking a trip back in time, imagining rail passengers disembarking for Santa Fe.

In March, 1944, 200 grams of uranium 235 were shipped from Y-12 in Oak Ridge, TN, to Los Alamos. Army Lieutenants dressed as salesmen travelled by commercial train to Chicago, then to New Mexico — and through Lamy station — with the uranium concealed in two coffee-cup-sized gold-lined nickel containers inside a special briefcase.