Nuclear strides

1960s saw some of SRP's greatest achievements

Web posted Sunday, November 12, 2000

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By Sylvia Cooper
Staff Writer

Al Peters (right) stands with a co-worker in the CMX experimental facility at Savannah River Plant in the 1960s. Mr. Peters says the '60s brought some of the facility's most exciting work, including the creation of californium-252 and the groundwork for computer control of reactors. SPECIAL

Computers, more powerful reactors and proliferation of reactor products marked the 1960s at the Savannah River Plant.

During those years, 10 nuclides were produced, including tritium and californium-252, and the plant played an increasing role in reprocessing uranium used as fuel in reactors at other sites.

As the decade began, 6,524 people were employed there. More than 900 of Du Pont's employees lived in Augusta; an additional 708 lived in North Augusta. Eighty-three percent lived in South Carolina, 60 percent of them in Aiken.

In January, the Atomic Energy Commission extended its contract with Du Pont for four years. And in March, die-hard labor leaders, seeking for the fifth time to unionize hourly paid employees, were defeated by an overwhelming majority.

Also that month, Congress took the first step toward appropriating $7´ million for improvements and new construction for fiscal 1960-61 at the plant.

By the time construction authorized by Congress was completed, Atomic Energy facilities in South Carolina would have a dollar value of about $1.36 billion, not counting the tremendous cost of operating the equipment, plant officials said.

The commission said the value of the completed plant and equipment at SRP was $1.26 billion. In addition, the estimated cost of projects then under construction ran to $44.9 million, and $10.8 million in new projects had been authorized.

The site was identified as one of four U.S. ``atomic cemeteries'' that the Atomic Energy Commission said were carefully fenced-in, guarded and safe from exploration by archaeologists, operators of bulldozers and even tunnel-digging children, plant spokesmen said.

``The '60s was a very, very dynamic decade for the Savannah River Plant,'' said Al Peters of Aiken, who worked at the plant from 1953 until he retired as manager of Plant Facilities and Services in 1989. ``In that period of time we were making major advancements that started in research and development in the Savannah River Laboratory in all aspects of the production operations on the plant.''

Du Pont researchers, scientists and engineers made major advances in the production of isotopes, in reactor safety and in total reactor production of weapons for the defense program, Mr. Peters said.

``So now, as I tell my wife, I actually never had a boring day in my entire career at that site. That includes all the research development from '53 until I left in '89.''

But the decade of the '60s was probably the most intellectually and technically challenging, he said.

``We were doing so many things to improve productivity, not just in the reactors but the raw materials facilities that fabricated the fuel and target assemblies for the reactors and also in the separation areas that separated all of the materials discharged from the reactors into various product streams,'' he said.

``It's during that period of time, that probably the most technological achievement at the plant took place, and that was the production of californium-252. It was a very special isotope that had a promise for use in the medical field and in some other fields, like mineral and oil exploration usage.''

The 1960s was also an extremely interesting period from an engineering and technical point, he said.

``And my career at that time was in the lab, where we were developing the technology to run the reactors to produce this californium-252. And in that period of time, the highest neutron flux ever achieved in a nuclear reactor in the world was achieved at the Savannah River Plant - and to do that, the highest heat flux ever achieved in any engineering application in the whole world.

Mr. Peters worked at Savannah River Site from 1953 until 1989, when he retired as manager of Plant Facilities and Services. MICHAEL HOLAHAN/STAFF

``And that was in the late '60s. But the research that preceded that actually started in the '50s. And all that research that took place in the '50s and the '60s allowed this to happen.''

During the 1960s, substantial improvements also were made in nuclear and industrial safety, Mr. Peters said.

``And that really throughout my whole career came first,'' he said. ``You had to have nuclear and industrial safety as your top priority. We could not have made those technical and engineering achievements without also carrying on extensive research in the safety area, be sure everything we were doing was safe.''

In that decade, the world's first computer-controlled nuclear reactor was built at SRP, he said.

``We developed all that technology for the computer control of the operation of a nuclear reactor,'' he said. ``And that later became standard in the whole industrial world for nuclear reactors.''

Du Pont personnel also developed computer technology for the entire production stream, not just for the reactors but also for the raw materials plant and the separations plant, Mr. Peters said.

``So it was a decade of real achievement, which any engineer and any scientist just loved because they were challenged that whole period of time,'' he said.

``But I want to tell you the same thing happened in the '50s. The same thing happened in the '70s. The same things happened in the '80s, but to a lesser degree.''

For example, the reactors were substantially improved with engineering advancements and changes to increase its nuclear power by a factor of seven over the power in the 1953 designs. And that allowed them to produce seven times more plutonium and tritium, he said.

``Whatever the government wanted in terms of weapons materials,'' he said. ``And that was an intense period of the Cold War, and the Russians were making advancements also, so a major effort in the late '50s and early '60s was in improving the productivity of the whole operations stream.

``And it started with the reactors, but for the reactors to be able to do that, the raw materials plant had to be able to produce the materials at a greater rate, and the separations plant had to be able to improve their facilities to separate it to match that increased rate coming out of the reactors.''

Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228.

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