The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was (according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) the world's first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses.

It was located near the later Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, about 25 miles (40&nbsp;km)<!-- Don't use Convert template here: It breaks tool-tip previews. --> from Pittsburgh.

The reactor reached criticality on December 2, 1957, and aside from stoppages for three core changes, it remained in operation until October 1982. The first electrical power was produced on December 18, 1957, as engineers synchronized the plant with the distribution grid of Duquesne Light Company.

The first Shippingport core reactor turned out to be capable of an output of 60 MWe one month after its launch.

The second core was similarly designed but more powerful, having a larger seed.

Being a breeder reactor, it had the ability to transmute relatively inexpensive thorium to uranium-233 as part of its fuel cycle.

The breeding ratio attained by Shippingport's third core was 1.01.

Criticism centers on the fact that the Shippingport plant had not been built to commercial specifications. Consequently, the construction cost per kilowatt at Shippingport was about ten times those for a conventional power plant.

Construction

thumb|Reactor pressure vessel during construction (1956)

In 1953, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his Atoms for Peace speech to the United Nations. Commercial nuclear power generation was cornerstone of his plan. A proposal by Duquesne Light Company was accepted by Admiral Rickover and the plans for the Shippingport Atomic Power Station started.

Ground was broken on Labor Day, September 6, 1954. President Eisenhower remotely initiated the first scoop of dirt at the ceremony.

The reactor achieved first criticality at 4:30 AM on December 2, 1957.

Kenneth Nichols of the AEC said it "became obvious" that the Rickover-Westinghouse pressurised-water reactor intended for an aircraft carrier was "the best choice for a reactor to demonstrate the production of electricity" with Rickover "having a going organization and a reactor project under way that now had no specific use to justify it". This was accepted by Lewis Strauss and the Commission in January 1954. The acceptance of Duquesne Light as the utility partner was announced on March 11. The ground-breaking ceremony was initiated by Eisenhower from Denver where he was giving a talk on atomic energy on Labor Day; Rickover ensured that the unmanned bulldozer pushing dirt did not dig in and stall by having the dozer blade riding along two railroad rails buried under six inches of dirt.

The origin of the project explains why the Shippingport reactor used 93%-enriched uranium, unlike later commercial power reactors that do not exceed 5% enrichment.

Other significant differences from commercial reactors include the use of hafnium for its control rods, although these were necessary and used only in the reactor's seed. the core was removed and found to contain nearly 1.4% more fissile material than when it was installed, demonstrating that breeding had occurred.

Decommissioning

On October 1, 1982, the reactor ceased operations after 25 years. Dismantlement of the facility began in September 1985.

In December 1988, the 956-ton (870-T) reactor pressure vessel/neutron shield tank assembly was lifted out of the containment building and loaded onto land transportation equipment in preparation for removal from the site and shipment by water to a burial facility in Washington State.

The site has been cleaned up and released for unrestricted use. While the Shippingport Reactor has been decommissioned, Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station Units 1 and 2 are still licensed and in operation at the site.

The $98 million (1985 estimate) cleanup of Shippingport has been used as an example of a successful reactor decommissioning by proponents of nuclear power; however, critics point out that Shippingport was smaller than most commercial nuclear power plants,

The reactor vessel from Trojan Nuclear Power Plant (located in Oregon), was also successfully shipped by waterway to the Hanford site; a much shorter trip than the Shippingport reactor.

Subsequent to Shippingport's decommissioning, three other large commercial reactors have been entirely leveled: Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station having been entirely decommissioned in 2007 with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) notifying Yankee in August that the former plant site had been fully decommissioned in accordance with NRC procedures and regulations; Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant completely decommissioned in 2005;

and Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.

All three prior commercial reactor sites have been returned to greenfield conditions and are open to visitors.

See also

  • Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station – a newer nuclear power station located at the same site
  • Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant – a 5 MWe Soviet pilot plant (1954)

Notes

References

  • Brief history of site Note: The picture above is the original site. This link shows the site after 1974 when Beaver Valley Units 1 and 2 were built adjacent the Shippingport Atomic Plant
  • Shippingport and Eisenhower
  • Shippingport Atomic Power Station-related items in the Naval Reactors History Database
  • Light-Water Breeder Reactor (LWBR)-related items in the Naval Reactors History Database
  • Shippingport Operations with the Light Water Breeder Reactor Core
  • Water Cooled Breeder Program Summary Report October 1987
  • "Atoms for Peace" in Pennsylvania
  • Jimmy Carter: Shippingport Light Water Breeder Reactor Remarks at a Ceremony Marking the Pennsylvania Facility's Increase to Full Power Production (December 2, 1977)
  • Fuel Summary Report: Shippingport Light Water Breeder Reactor September 2002
  • Slow breeder makes its own nuclear fuel (Popular Science) April 1978
  • The Shippingport pressurized water reactor A detailed textbook description of the design and construction of Shippingport, presented as a volume at the 1958 Atoms for Peace Geneva convention