What Ever Happened To The First Nuclear Reactor In Human History?

In December of 2017, I accepted a job with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, the largest and oldest forest preserve in the nation.  One of the first programs I worked on was near Red Gate Woods in the Palos Preserve.  By word of mouth I was told that Red Gate Woods was home to the first nuclear reactor in human history.  

Wait, what's that now?  A nuclear reactor in the middle of a forest preserve?  And not just any nuclear reactor but the very FIRST nuclear reactor in human history???

Like most American history buffs I was marginally aware of Albert Einstein's famous letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (dated from August 2, 1939) that urged President Roosevelt to begin a nuclear research program.  As the story goes, after Nazi Germany seized uranium mines in Czechoslovakia, several of Einstein's colleagues convinced him that the Nazis were working to develop an atomic bomb.  Einstein (who had fled Germany in 1933 when Hitler first came to power) and these other scientists urged FDR to immediately fund an American nuclear research program to counter the Nazi threat.

And as a history buff, I was also aware of the Manhattan Project, the government program that created the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in August 1945).  But I had no real knowledge of what happened between Einstein's letter and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  For instance, I knew nothing of Enrico Fermi's role.  Fermi was the Italian man who navigated the team of scientists at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago that actually created the first nuclear reactor.  And I had no idea how that nuclear reactor ended up in Red Gate Woods in the Palos Preserves.  Fortunately, the Forest Preserve (FPDCC) had an article on its website that detailed the process.  But before I delved into that article I began to wonder how the human race went from discovering the inner workings of an atom to creating bombs that could instantly destroy cities all in a matter of a couple decades? 

The story begins during a golden age of physics that was by the works of Albert Einstein. In July of 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers leased 1025 acres of land from the FPDCC and dubbed it Site A (A for Argonne).  In 1943 the Chicago Pile (CP-1) reactor located at the University of Chicago - in which the first nuclear chain reaction in human history took place (Dec 2, 1942) – was disassembled, transported to Site A (aka the Palos Park laboratories) and reassembled there.  The reactor was now called CP-2. 

So What happened at Site A?

In the spring of 2018 I began taking hikes to Site A on a regular basis, sometimes accompanied by co-workers or visitors to the Forest Preserves.  Conversations were started, questions were asked and inevitably my curiosity peaked.  What exactly happened at Site A?  Many of my questions were answered by the FPDCC's website.  I found out that in 1943 construction on the world’s first water-cooled reactor (dubbed CP-3) began at Site A, which became functional in May of 1944.  I also found out that another research program, unbeknownst to the Forest Preserve at that time, took place at Site A that included studies on irradiated laboratory animals.  In fact, during the time the site was active, several scientists were working there who were also exposed to radium and beryllium which caused their white blood cell counts to drop and blistering of their skin.

Eventually, Site A would employ over 200 people.  In addition to CP-2 and CP-3, Site A housed research labs, a library, a machine shop, a medical suite, a cafeteria, and a dormitory.  All those who worked there contributed to gleaning information that not only informed the work of Robert Oppenheimer and the team that created the first nuclear bomb for the Manhattan Project but also eventually paved the way for creating more powerful nuclear reactors (that would be used in everything from submarines to power plants).

The Franck Report

History is written by the winners, as the old adage goes, which is why many Americans will tell you that dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to end WWII.  However, factual documentation bears otherwise.  And that documentation begins with a report signed by several prominent nuclear physicists just weeks before the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dropped.  The Franck Report (named for James Franck, the head of the committee that produced it) recommended that the U.S. government NOT use the atomic bomb on Japan.  The document predicted a nuclear arms race and the concept of MAD (mutually assured destruction).  It also suggested that instead of killing thousands of innocent civilians, the bomb should be detonated on a barren island or desert as a demonstration to all the representatives of the United Nations.  The document was taken to Washington DC by James Franck, where he met with the Interim Committee.  The Interim Committee was a group that had been appointed by President Harry Truman to advise him on the use of the atomic bomb.  Despite the recommendation from these leading physicists (at a meeting on June 21^st), the Interim Committee concluded that there was no alternative other than to use the bomb.  On August 6^th and 9^th, the U.S. government dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing nearly a quarter of a million innocent civilians, and the names James Franck and Eugene Rabinowitch (who wrote most of the report and who worked with Franck at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory) would largely be lost to history.    

The MAD world of the nuclear arms race

The 1950s are remembered as a golden age in America.  The economy was booming, the middle class was emerging, and recreational time was at an all-time high which led to such innovations as the rise of muscle cars and electric guitars and professional football, TV sitcoms, drive-in movies, overly-budgeted epic films, multi-million dollar amusement parks, and spacious suburban homes stocked with shiny new kitchen appliances and electrical gadgets, all connected by newly constructed highways.  And to protect all of the newfound wealth and the new American way of life was the rise of the military-industrial complex.     

The extent that the military-industrial complex influences our society is still largely a secret to this day, but thanks to the release of thousands of classified documents over the past two decades, we can see SOME of that influence as it pertained to the 1950s.  One book that reveals certain secret projects and the overall attitude of the military-industrial complex during America's golden age is Annie Jacobsen's Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's top Secret Military Base.

Ask most Americans if the United States ever intentionally dropped nuclear bombs on itself and they would say "Of course not."  But the reality is that from 1945 to 1992 the U.S. tested over 1,100 nuclear bombs in 5 different U.S. states plus one U.S. associated state.  At first, the U.S. tested its nuclear bombs on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean - which included the detonation of a 10.5 megaton bomb called Ivy Mike.  Mike was the size of an airplane hanger.  It was built on a beautiful island in the Pacific Ocean called Elugelab Island.  The explosion from Mike immediately vaporized the entire island, sending 80 MILLION tons of pulverized coral into the upper atmosphere and then raining back down on where Elegelab Island once was. The blast was ten times larger than the one from the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.   Mike's fireball was 3 miles wide. When visibility returned after the explosion, the island was gone, a black crater filled with lagoon water exists there today. 

In 1951 the U.S started testing nuclear bombs on the continental United States (CONUS), specifically at the Nevada Test Site - a 5,000-acre range that had previously been a wildlife reservation where wild horses, herds of antelope, mountain lions, and bighorn sheep called home.  Centuries earlier, Native Americans lived in the caves of the mountains there.  They left behind paintings and petroglyphs on the cave walls.  But between January 1951 and January 1956, forty-nine (49) nuclear bombs exploded at the Nevada Test Site, which included 12 bombs that exploded during Operation Teapot.  In 1957, the testing was ratcheted up with a series of nuclear tests called Operation Plumbbob.  Thirty (30) nuclear bombs were detonated during Plumbbob - contaminating nearly 1000 acres at the Nevada Test Site.  The tests were designed to study the effects that nuclear explosions had on structures, people, and animals and approximately 18,000 U.S. troops (of all four branched Air Force, Navy, Army,  and Marines).  The military was interested in how the average soldier would stand up to the physical and psychological challenges of the tactical nuclear battlefield.  Also, there were 12,000 pigs subjected to nuclear experiments.  The military clothed the unsuspecting pigs in various military uniforms to see which materials would hold up best against thermal radiation.  Many of the pigs survived with third-degree burns to 80% of their bodies. 

The grand-daddy of the bombs that exploded during Plumbbob was the Hood Bomb, which was detonated on the 5th of July, 1957.  The Hood Bomb was six times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The flash of its explosion was visible from Canada to Mexico and from 800 miles out at sea.  The pre-dawn blast was so bright that it lit up the entire western United States.  The blast was felt as far away as Los Angeles.  The LA Times headline read: "LA Awakened.  Flash Seen, Shock Felt Here.  Calls Flood Police Switch Board."  The explosion set an entire mountain near the site to flames.  Huge boulders were flung around the site, blocking roads.  The mushroom cloud from the blast was seen in Utah as radio-active nuclear fallout rained down upon the test site.  The area in which the bomb went off was reduced to nothing but ash and sand.  The temperature had reached 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Still, the U.S. amped up its nuclear testing programming even more.  In late 1958, President Eisenhower’s chief science advisor – James Killian – organized, oversaw, and then tried to cover up the detonation of two of the most dangerous nuclear explosions of all time. Two thermonuclear devices (called Teak and Orange) exploded in the Earth’s upper atmosphere at Johnson Atoll (in the middle of the Pacific Ocean about 750 miles west of Hawaii). The bombs were set off 28 to 50 miles above the Earth’s surface to see what kind of effect nuclear bombs would have on the ozone layer. The results of the detonations were fierce. The fireballs produced by the explosion instantly burned the retinas of any living thing that had been looking up at the sky without goggles within a 225-mile radius of the blast. This included hundreds of test monkeys and rabbits whose heads had been locked into gadgets that forced them to face the megaton blast. From Guam to Wake Island to Maui, the sky changed from light blue to red, white, and gray, creating an aurora 2100 miles long. Radio communication in the area went dead. All birds in the area disappeared. In the first ten milliseconds from detonation, the fireball grew ten miles wide. It had enough yield to obliterate an area the size of Manhattan. By one second after detonation, the fireball was 40 miles wide - large enough to take out all of NYC.  Two weeks after Teak and Orange, Killian commenced with another secret nuclear bomb explosion called Operation Argus, in which nuclear-tipped missiles were fired from a warship and exploded 300 miles into outer space.

These kinds of tests not only alarmed American citizens but alarmed the Soviets as well.  The explosions affected Soviet satellites and caused a heightened escalation of testing by the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union tested nearly 1000 known nuclear devices from 1946 to 1992.  Their biggest would be the Tsar Bomba, which was dropped on the Arctic Barents Sea in October of 1961.  The Tsar Bomba, which was equivalent to 58 megatons of TNT, was ten times the power of ALL the explosives used in World War II (including the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) combined. The bomb flattened entire villages in the area and broke out windows as far as way as Finland. Any living creature within a 400-mile radius of the blast that looked at it immediately went blind.  

The Environmental Concerns of Nuclear Testing

Back in the summer of 1958, the nuclear testing director at the Nevada Test Site, Dr. James Shreve authored a report that warned of an unforeseen outcome of the nuclear testing that was going on at the Nevada Test Site.  Shreve referenced Charles Darwin's study of earthworms in which Darwin calculated that 53,000 earthworms could move 18 tons of soil.  Shreve then warned that if earthworms ingested the nuclear waste left over from their testing then it would cause a massive translocation of the hazardous material as the worms moved to other locations or when birds came by and ate those earthworms and migrated hundreds of miles away with them. 

A strange thing about plutonium is that it is mainly lethal if it reaches the lower respiratory tract.  It takes only one-millionth of a gram of plutonium to kill a person if it reaches his or her lungs.  But it is not necessarily lethal if it is ingested.  The particles can go through the stomach and be excreted as an inert material with virtually no body assimilation.  As long as a person doesn't inhale plutonium and it doesn't get into the bloodstream or bones then it will not cause the person any physical harm.  But if a worm mixes plutonium throughout a landscape, or a bird ingests a plutonium-laden earthworm and poops it out on your car's windshield, where it dries until you come along to wipe it off (therefore causing the particles to stir in the air which you are breathing) or the dirt that your tires kick up as you pass over it, THEN humans are at risk of death.  And since plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, that plutonium-laden bird shit is going to be here for a long, long time.

Shreve reported his study of how plutonium could be translocated from the Nevada Test Site to his superiors during the summer of 1957.  However, the AEP/UCLA logical group that had been hired to deal with such problems was "too committed on Operation Plumbbob to consider the responsibility."  And there was no further debate.  The other 29 nuclear bombs that were scheduled to blow during the spring and summer of 1957 went ahead as planned.  The military-industrial complexes' obsession with blowing shit up took precedence over the safety of American citizens and any kind of effort to contain future harm to the environment.  It was not until 1998 that the top layer of earth from the land where Plumbbob transpired was scraped up and removed.

How Does Radiation Kill You? 

Nuclear radiation ionizes atoms by knocking off their electrons. This damages DNA molecules by breaking the bonds between atoms or disrupting the bonds of surrounding molecules, including DNA.  More specifically, the nucleus of radioactive elements undergoes decay and emits high-energy particles. If you stand in the way of those particles, they are going to interact with the cells of your body. You literally get a particle, an energy packet, moving through your cells and tissues.
If radiation changes DNA molecules enough, cells can't replicate and they begin to die, which causes the immediate effects of radiation sickness -- nausea, swelling, and hair loss. Cells that are damaged less severely may survive and replicate, but the structural changes in their DNA can disrupt normal cell processes -- like the mechanisms that control how and when cells divide. Cells that can't control their division grow out of control, becoming cancerous.

If radiation particles are ingested, some pass through the body before doing much damage, but some particles linger and cause a health risk.  Radiation exposure risk is measured in units called Sieverts.  This unit of measure calculates the type and amount of radiation, and which parts of the body are exposed.  In a typical year, a person might receive a total dose of two or three millisieverts from things like ambient radioactivity (microwave ovens, x-rays, etc).  People who work in nuclear plants have a limit of 0.05 sieverts per year. At or below these levels, the enzymes that repair DNA keep up with damage enough to keep the risk of cancer low. Above them, the body's systems of repair can't keep pace. 100 millisieverts a year is the threshold above which cancer risk starts to increase, according to the World Nuclear Association.  Receiving a one-siever dose of radiation in a day is enough to make you feel sick.  One to three-siever doses of radiation in a day damages bone marrow and organs.  It will make you feel very sick.   From three to six you begin to hemorrhage and from six to ten, death is 90 percent likely. And above ten is certain death.

Decommission and Contamination of Plot M

By 1954, both reactors at Site A were outdated and therefore the site was decommissioned.  A more advanced reactor dubbed CP-5 was built several miles north in DuPage county.  Many of the personnel and, as much salvageable reactor fuel as possible, were transferred to CP-5.  The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) promised to “remove, destroy, or render harmless” any materials from Palos Park labs that posed a hazard to the public.  Between 1955 and 1956, the AEC supervised the removal of a large amount of radioactive fuel from the site and transferred it to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.  A large hole was then dug at Palos Park labs where the remaining parts of CP-2 and CP-3 were dumped and buried under 40 feet of dirt.  Control of the plot of land that housed the Palos Park labs was returned to the Forest Preserve District as the AEC (and later the Department of Energy) conducted periodic surveys of the site to monitor radioactivity.

However, a few years later, low levels of tritium were found in nearby Red Gate Woods picnic wells and in 1977 the DOE confirmed that Site A was the source of the contamination.  Then in the 1980s, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency uncovered a uranium pellet, traces of strontium 90, traces of tritium, plutonium, technetium, cesium, and uranium while surveying Site A and the nearby woods around it.  In reaction to these findings, area residents mobilized with activist organizations like the Sierra Club and Broken Arrow in calling for a study by Greenpeace.  The study detected over a dozen areas that warranted cleanup – even as the DOE assured the public of the area’s safety.  Eventually, nearly $30 million in taxpayers' money was committed to rehabilitating the area. 

In 1994, after spending millions to clean up Red Gate Woods, the DOE listed the area as a potential disposal site of radioactive waste.  Once again the public mobilized and between 1995 and 1997 approximately 500 cubic yards of radioactive soil and debris were removed from Site A.  In September 1997 the 32-acre area was reopened.  In 2002 the Illinois Department of Public Health concluded that the Site A cleanup adequately removed any public health risk and that the exposures at Plot M were below those that pose a risk to public health.

Today, as I hike with Forest Preserve visitors to Site A, I explain that I have been to the site over a dozen times and have suffered no known physical damage to my person.  I even rub the bald spot on the back of my head and assure them that this follicle recession started way before I ever began hiking to Site A.  Still, there are several other conversations that the hikers and I get into, and they often begin with questions like: 


Why did it take so long for the IDOPH to deem the area as “no longer a risk”?
How and where do you think the line between technological advances and environmental health should be?

What do we make of this urge in man to destroy stuff?

Do you think the US really needed to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

These are all good questions and they have as many answers as there are people who ask them.  But there is one question that we do know the answer to:
Whatever happened to the first nuclear reactor in human history?
It's buried right here at Red Gate Woods in the Forest Preserves of Cook County.