page_title: Idaho National Laboratory
section_title: Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I)
hierarchical_section_title: Idaho National Laboratory / Earlier projects / Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I)
context_page_description: Idaho National Laboratory is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Energy Alliance. While the laboratory does other research, historically it has been involved with nuclear research.
  Various organizations have built more than 50 reactors at what is commonly called "the Site", including the ones that gave America its first usable amount of electricity from nuclear power and the power plant for the world's first nuclear submarine. Although many are now decommissioned, these facilities are the largest concentration of reactors in the world.
  It is on a 890-square-mile complex in the high desert of eastern Idaho, between Arco to the west and Idaho Falls and Blackfoot to the east. Atomic City, Idaho is just south. The laboratory employs approximately 4,000 people.
context_section_description: In the early afternoon of December 20, 1951, Argonne National Laboratory scientist Walter Zinn and a small crew of assistants witnessed a row of four light bulbs light up in a nondescript brick building in the eastern Idaho desert. Electricity from a generator connected to Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) flowed through them. This was the first time that a usable amount of electrical power had ever been generated from nuclear fission.
  Only days afterward, the reactor produced all the electricity needed for the entire EBR complex. One ton of natural uranium can produce more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity — this is equivalent to burning 16,000 tons of coal or 80,000 barrels of oil.
  More central to EBR-I's purpose than just generating electricity, however, was its role in proving that a reactor could create more nuclear fuel as a by-product than it consumed during operation. In 1953, tests verified that this was the case. The site of this event is memorialized as a Registered National Historic Landmark, open to the public every day Memorial Day through Labor Day.
caption: The first four bulbs lit by electricity from nuclear power hung near the generator on the second floor of EBR-I
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