July 13-14 2013 Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho

We had stopped at the EBR –1 once before, but it was closed. This time it was open and we toured it.

Experimental Breeder Reactor- 1, the world’s first nuclear power plant. It was the experimental plant, where they learned how to create power from uranium. The breeder actually turned the Uranium 235 into plutonium.  I had no idea that plutonium was not a naturally occurring element. The reaction creates heat, the heat creates steam from the water, which turns the turbines making electricity. It was pretty weird having a tour of a once classified nuclear plant by a woman named Katia, with a Russian accent.

In the control room Katia explained that the Scram button, which stops the reaction in case of an emergency is called that because in the first reactors they had a cadinum rod suspended over the core on a rope, they had a man with an ax stationed there to ax the rope and drop the rod if need be. He was called the Safety Control Rod ax man, SCRAM.

Katia showing us the core. The plant is not operational, or radioactive anymore, but this is what it looked like, and it was dropped into the hole in a 15 foot leaded cement block and a cement plug was dropped on top. The reaction took place in the block. The rods were tested in a ‘hot box’, giant cube of leaded cement. The windows are 39 sheets of one inch thick leaded glass, making a 39 inch window. The items inside were manipulated with manipulator arms.

John running the example manipulator arms. John watching a video on a 50’s TV, in a 50’s living room about the plant.

The bus (and another) parked in front of the nuclear aircraft engines. The planes would only need refueling every 30 days. They never had the funding to build a plane big enough to hold these huge engines and the shielding. Arco, the nearby town was the first in the world to be lit by atomic power. The power was produced in a similar plant called ERB 2. It powered Arco until 1962, when it was shut down due to public fears of nuclear power.  ERB proved that nuclear energy could be produced safely, but none of the  plants that melted down, or the current ones are built to the specifications of ERB 2. Not sure why, maybe cost?

Also in Arco is this sub conning tower and torpedo. They were placed there to support the military overseas.  A old building on the plains. The whole plains of Idaho would look this dry, except that it is all irrigated and a very large agricultural area.

Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho is a 52 mile long lava field called the Great Rift. It was a fissure oozing lava instead of a violent volcano.  We know how to have fun. Camp in a black lava field when it is in the 90’s. It was not as bad as it sounded, there was a breeze and  the shade was no to bad. It cooled down really quickly when the sun went down.  Really a pretty place, like camping on the moon.

The camp ground.

In the cooler evening we headed out to explore the lava. The lava flow from the north cinder cone. It is the pahoehoe lava, Hawaiian for rope like. It was hot, fluid lava forming a smooth rope like surface. Looks kind of like buffalo chips to me.

Sunset over the Craters of the moon.

We climbed Inferno Cone. It is a big cinder cone. There is a photo of an active cinder cone in Hawaii. It is high pressure, hot foamy lava, with a high gas content. It cools in the air into light cinders before hitting the ground, and it forms cone.

The  a` a` lava is thicker more viscous lava, it emerges rubble-like and makes crusty sharp lava. We hiked the Spatter cone trail in the morning. The spatter cones are like miniature volcanoes, the lava forms as ejected globs of tacky lava that weld together.

The lava tubes (caves) form when the lava hardens on the top surface and hot lava still flows underneath. A Hawaiian lava tube forming.  You need a free permit to go into the lava tubes. If you have been in any other caves in the last 8 years you can’t wear to take anything with you that went into the other caves unless it has been sterilized. To protect the bats from the white nose syndrome, that kills them. We have been in so many caves the last year that every thing we own probably needs sterilizing. Washing sterilizes most things, but not many people wash their shoes. We didn’t go in. We went in last time we were here, before the bus trip and all the caverns. They were kind of like dark caves.  The blue dragon lava flow is called that because it looks like scales of a dragon and the surface is blue.

We hiked the Devils Orchard too in the morning. It is from a violent eruption that tears the walls of the cone apart and huge chunks of hard lava flow with the liquid lava.

White flowering bushes, currants, yellow blazing stars, red dwarf buckwheat and squirrels live in the lava fields.