Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

Sub-Themes: Reactor Testing, Experimentation, and Development
and Commercial Reactor Safety
EBR-I, Argonne National Laboratory West
Argonne National Laboratory: An Introduction. The origin of the Argonne National Laboratory
places the purpose of the National Reactor Testing Station into a national context. 40
On December 2, 1942, in the basement of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi and
a team of researchers conducted the experiment that produced the world’s first self-sustained nuclear
chain reaction. The Chicago Pile #1 (CP-1) experiment was part of the Manhattan Project, the
government’s secret effort to produce an atomic weapon. The scientists who conducted the experiment
were members of the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab), one of several secret research facilities
involved in the bomb project.
The secret project responded to political and scientific events in Europe in the 1930s after Otto Hahn
and Fritz Strassman discovered nuclear fission. Physicists worldwide understood that controlled nuclear
fission could provide a nearly unlimited source of energy. It could also be designed for bombs with
unimaginably powerful explosions. As Hitler advanced, scientists feared that German scientists might be
first to discover how to control it for the production of bombs. Several of them petitioned President
Franklin Roosevelt to support atomic energy research in the U.S. By 1942 the Manhattan Project was
underway.
The scientists working on CP-1 knew they would not be able to continue pile research in the
basement of Stagg Field. Their assignment, once the chain reaction was achieved, was to experiment with
uranium pile size and configuration, searching for the most effective pile design for plutonium
production, (an activity that took place at Hanford, Washington). For improved safety, security, and
working space, the Met Lab group moved in 1943 to the Argonne Forest Preserve, a site near Chicago.
Enrico Fermi was named director of the new Argonne Laboratory. 41
Manhattan Project scientists had always discussed the future of nuclear research. Atomic science was
new. It had potential for power production and other uses, but to advance these, further research was
needed in materials, efficiency, operating methods, and safety.
The Manhattan Project laboratories were the likely centers for such research. In 1946, a committee
formed by General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, recommended distributing various
research needs among the existing laboratories and a new one to be located in the Northeast. Argonne
would pursue atomic pile, or reactor research. Walter H. Zinn became director after Enrico Fermi moved
to Los Alamos. 42
By August 1, 1946, when President Harry S. Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act, the newly
named Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) was one month old. It would focus on two major AEC
objectives: developing reactor concepts and the safety of commercial power plant reactors.
Establishing A Test Site for Nuclear Reactors: 1949–1951. One of Walter Zinn’s earliest
proposals was to design and construct an experimental “breeder” reactor, a reactor that would produce
more fuel than it consumed. In those early days of nuclear research, scientists believed that uranium was a
40. For additional background, see Stacy, Proving the Principle, Chapter 3, “The Uranium Trail Leads to Idaho,” p. 18-27.
41. Jack M. Holl, Argonne National Laboratory, 1946-96 (University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 22-23. Hereafter cited as “Holl,
Argonne.” After the war a larger site in Du Page County, Illinois, became the current location of Argonne National
Laboratory.
42. “Atomic pile” was the early term for a reactor, coined because the materials used in the chain reaction experiments were
piled on top of each other. The word “reactor” came into use after World War II. Holl, Argonne, p. 7, 35-44.
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