EBR-I Atomic Museum

EBR-I was built in 1949 on a lonely stretch of the Idaho desert chosen precisely because nothing lived there — the site that became the Idaho National Laboratory. On December 20, 1951, Walter Zinn's Argonne team watched physicist Harold Lichtenberger's four 200-watt bulbs glow from sodium-cooled fission heat, proving for the first time in history that a reactor could make electricity; two days later the whole town of Arco's power came from the atom in a symbolic demonstration, and the town has claimed 'first lit by atomic power' ever since. In 1953 the reactor achieved another first, breeding more fuel than it consumed. It was shut down in 1964 after fifteen years of experiments, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and opened as a museum in 1976 — run today by the Department of Energy with summer tours guided by retired reactor operators. The nearby EBR-II and the Test Reactor Area continue the story on the INL bus tour.