ping to self to read your story. Out at the Idaho National Labs there is a prototype of a nuke aircraft engine as I recall.
The INL were the folks that made the reactor used in Camp Century. I think it was serial #6 (which would imply that there were at least 6 made).
I think the crew, three or four of them died on scene. One was missing, until somebody noticed a body impaled at the top on a control rod that was pushed against the ceiling.
That accident sort of ended the research into small, "safe", reactors.
I believe they buried it out in the boonies of Idaho.
You will also find out there the concrete-sealed site of a reactor criticality involving small reactors designed for Army use in remote areas. The reactor was designed to be operated by a crew of three. Sometime in the 60’s, I believe, the criticality alarm went off at the central operating area of the lab. There were various contractors working on nuclear power at sites separated by a few miles within the laboratory perimeter. All sites were serviced with emergency response from the central operations area.
When the central ops people got to the Army remote reactor site, they found all quiet. Only problem was as the responder approached the reactor silo, his radiation detector pegged out. He banged it against a wall and continued on into the building. Only when he got to the door of the reactor room did he realize something was wrong. The reactor vessel had obviously “leaped” out of its floor containment and it now sat askew in the hole, like a peg not quite properly in the hole. He also saw at least one body on the floor.
Eventually all three bodies of the crew were found and they finally pieced together the story. The reactor itself was not at fault. Apparently it was a murder/suicide situation where one crew member was having an affair with the wife of another crew member. The third member of the crew was caught in the conflagration when the wronged husband pulled the control rod out of the reactor to cause the uncontrolled reaction. That man’s body was located pinned to the ceiling of the reactor building by the control rod he had pulled. How do I know this? I used to work there and met some of those who had to clean up the mess.
I do hope this one really is failsafe and safe from failed human relations.
2 protoypes. My thesis adviser was on the team that developed them. They worked very well.
No, that was in Nevada -- the NERVA project.
In fact I believe there are two and they’re still there.