INL News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 24, 2017
NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS:
Sarah Neumann, 208-520-1651, sarah.neumann@inl.gov
Lori McNamara, 208-520-6066, lori.mcnamara@inl.gov
Experimental Breeder Reactor-I opens Memorial Day weekend for summer tours
INL’s historical landmark museum opens Friday, May 26, and free guided tours will be provided seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Labor Day weekend. Visitors may also tour the facility on their own aided by self-guided tour instructions.
EBR-I is featured in the Atlas Obscura, “the definitive guide to the world’s wondrous and curious places,” and is also listed in The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science & Technology Come Alive.
The reactor was completed in 1951 and was the first nuclear reactor to produce usable electricity on Dec. 20, 1951, with INL recently celebrating EBR-I’s 65th anniversary. EBR-I was operated until late 1963 and decommissioned in 1964. It was dedicated as a Registered National Historic Landmark on Aug. 25, 1966, by President Lyndon Johnson and Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
EBR-I was also dedicated as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1979 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Historic Landmark for Advances in Materials Technology in 1979 by the American Society of Metals, and a Nuclear Historic Landmark by the American Nuclear Society in 1987. In June 2004, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) marked EBR-I as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and computing.
Last summer, EBR-I hosted more than ten thousand visitors from across the world, and more than a quarter of a million visitors from every state and dozens of foreign countries have come through its doors since EBR-I opened for summer tours in 1975. All are encouraged to share the images of their experiences on the EBR-I Instagram and Facebook accounts, where additional information about EBR-I can be located.
INL is one of the DOE’s national laboratories. The laboratory performs work in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and environment. INL is the nation’s leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Day-to-day management and operation of the laboratory is the responsibility of Battelle Energy Alliance.
Learn more at http://www.inl.gov/ebr/ or watch the video to take a virtual tour of the historic nuclear reactor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPxAxBul1BI.
See more INL news at www.inl.gov. Follow @INL on Twitter or visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/IdahoNationalLaboratory.
—INL-17-019—
