EBR-I: The Four Lightbulbs That Started the Atomic Age

On the afternoon of December twentieth, nineteen fifty-one, four two-hundred-watt incandescent bulbs lit up in a building on a flat desert scrubland in southeastern Idaho. The electricity came from a machine the size of a large thermos bottle. It was the first time in human history that usable electricity had been generated from nuclear fission.

The machine was called Experimental Breeder Reactor One, EBR-I for short, and it sat in the middle of a federal research station about eighteen miles southeast of the small town of Arco. The scientists and engineers who watched the lights come on wrote in the log that afternoon with deliberate understatement: "EBR-I produced its first usable electrical power." Someone later taped a handwritten sign to the panel: "Electricity produced here for the first time by nuclear energy." The log entry for the four bulbs is not dramatic. The implications took several years to become clear.

Two years later, in nineteen fifty-three, the reactor generated enough electricity to power the entire town of Arco, population roughly one thousand, making it the first municipality in the world to run on atomic power. The demonstration lasted only about one hour, but it was enough. Arco painted the year on the cliff above town and has been painting new graduation years there since nineteen twenty.

The EBR-I building is now a National Historic Landmark and a free public museum. It sits out in the sagebrush a short drive off the highway, surrounded by nothing, visited by almost no one. The reactor core is still there, sealed but visible. The four bulb sockets are still in the ceiling. It is one of the most consequential rooms in the history of the modern world, and on most days the parking lot is empty.