ANNOUNCER: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, devoted to preserving the spirit of Idaho.

From Anne Voilleque and Louise Nelson, from Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, the Idaho Public Television Endowment, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NARRATOR: World War II was over.

National leaders who had rushed to build an atomic bomb to end the war, were looking for a new way to prove the United States was a country not to be trifled with in the post-war-world.

JUSTIN SMITH: We can make an explosion, but if we can control that radioactivity, there's more we can do.

DAVE HONABACH: Back then, what we know as the Idaho National Lab was really a national reactor test facility, and there was a lot of development in that area.

NARRATOR: As the United States was developing a nuclear reactor in the remote desert of Idaho, the US Navy was working to develop its own reactor a few miles away.

JUSTIN SMITH: Rickover looked at atomic energy and realized we wouldn't have to refuel like we did during World War II in the middle of the action if we were using nuclear.

NARRATOR: Admiral Hyman Rickover, known as the father of the nuclear navy, was intent on developing a submarine engine that didn't rely on traditional fuel.

If successful, it would make the US Navy a true world power.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: He believed that nuclear power could offer a war-fighting advantage.

So, he created an organization starting with a lot of learning that went on in 1946.

NARRATOR: While submarines and aircraft carriers are built near oceans, the reactors that powered those ships were built here, in Idaho.

FORMER GOV.

KEMPTHORNE: If any state has a DNA connection to the nuclear navy, it is Idaho.

The very first nuclear ship the Nautilus, a nuclear submarine, the propulsion system was designed and built in Idaho, eastern Idaho.

REP. MIKE SIMPSON: But when Admiral Rickover brought the Naval Reactors to Idaho, its been a great boon to the State of Idaho and to the Navy.

NARRATOR: 40,000 sailors would rotate through Idaho as part of their training before being assigned to nuclear-powered ships.

SEN. MIKE CRAPO: I grew up in Idaho Falls with all of those sailors.

And they made a big impact on our community.

They were welcomed, they were loved, the people in the community were really proud of the fact that we could be a part of our national defense.

NARRATOR: Idaho experience takes a look at the original prototypes at the Naval Reactors Facility in eastern Idaho.

Now being demolished, take a look at the historic work being done at the remote and restricted facility that few get to see.

This is Idaho's Nuclear Navy on Idaho Experience.

(Music) NARRATOR: In eastern Idaho, the Arco desert is an isolated, windswept landscape full of sagebrush and wildlife.

In some places, it extends beyond what the eye can see.

In the 40s, the land was a bombing range for the Army and artillery range used by the Navy.

But the Atomic Energy Commission, created after World War II, saw this as a land of opportunity.

DAVE HONABACH: Shortly after World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission was formed and there was a new demand of taking this new technology, nuclear power, and ultimately use it for commercial applications in the potential of using it for naval applications.

Back then, what we know as the Idaho National Lab was really a national reactor test facility, and there was a lot of development in that area.

NARRATOR: Similar to the top-secret Manhattan project that built the atomic bomb, the US government was in a race to use nuclear fission to produce power.

Since most of the artillery JUSTIN SMITH: And there was this idea that, we can make an explosion, but if we can control that radioactivity, there's more we can do.

DAVE HONABACH: We were trying to understand how to commercialize nuclear power.

But also how to apply it.

NARRATOR: Construction on the new National Reactor Testing Station began in the mid-forties.

ANNOUNCER: Here, there are more reactors of more advanced and different types than in any equivalent anywhere.

This rolling desert plain has been nicknamed prototype prairie.

NARRATOR: While the civilian side was working on an experimental breeder reactor, EBR-1, another project was in the works by the United States Navy.

DAVE HONABACH: What was it like back in World War II?

Submarine Force obviously added significant value.

But they were diesel submarines and while they had significant war-fighting capabilities, they had one achille's heel.

And that achille's heel was that they were diesel powered and they needed air in order to operate the diesels to recharge the batteries.

Effectively, diesel submarines were surface ships that momentarily submerged underneath the ocean in order to be very stealthy in order to conduct their war-fighting operations.

NARRATOR: The Navy selected one man to find a solution to the submarine problem, Captain Hyman Rickover.

JUSTIN SMITH: Rickover became an admiral later in his career.

He started at a lower rank, but he was a brilliant man.

Just a very unique individual, a very focused man.

You know, we might say now that he was obsessive compulsive, and he was able to lead his people that way too.

ANNOUNCER: In 1946, a group of Naval officers and civilians were assigned to work on the Manhattan Engineer Districts, Daniels Power Pile Project at the Clinton Laboratories, now the Atomic Energy Commission's Oakridge National Laboratory, Oakridge, Tennessee.

Senior member was captain, later vice-admiral H.G.

Rickover.

A qualified submariner and engineer with a strong faith in both the practicality and necessity of atomic propulsion.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: He believed that nuclear power could offer a war-fighting advantage.

So, he created an organization starting with a lot of learning that went on in 1946, but the organization partnered with the Atomic Energy Commission and set out to lay the groundwork for having nuclear powered submarine.

ANNOUNCER: The reactor, encased in heavy shielding, contains fuel elements of highly enriched uranium.

NARRATOR: Once the Navy had a plan, it needed to prove that it worked.

It made sense to utilize the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho to build the prototype naval reactor.

Construction began the fall of 1950, a few miles north of EBR-1.

Working at a fevered pace, it was well underway the following summer.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: The Navy with the federal government brought in the best of breed out there.

We brought in Electric Boat to create and build the S1W prototype.

We brought in the Argonne National Laboratory to do design work on the reactor plan.

We brought in Bettis Facility and Westinghouse to design the propulsion plant.

NARRATOR: The main building, pumphouse, and gate house were the first to be completed in 1951.

But an early issue the project had was finding components for the reactor.

Because this was a first-of-its-kind reactor, there weren't parts you could buy off the shelf, so Captain Rickover had to find someone to build them from scratch.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: When he stood up the nuclear power program, he needed industry to produce components with precision and high quality.

At the time, the industry didn't think they could do that.

He had to create the authorities and responsibilities and get all those aligned with the resources to do this, to deliver nuclear power for the nation.

But because of his persistence and demanding nature, he was able to achieve that.

And that sets the foundation for everything that we do today.

FRANK CALDWELL: The S1W prototype - submarine, first generation, Westinghouse was the proving ground for the Nautilus.

It allowed us to prove out the concepts to work on the equipment locations in a tight constrained hull, to prove out the shielding and to prove out that all of the components were going to work.

It also allowed us to train operators.

DAVE HONABACH: On March 30th of 1953, S1W went critical for the first time.

And believe it or not, that was only 70-years ago.

After some reactor physics testing, the S1W prototype then went to full power operations, and that simulated a submarine going full speed across the Atlantic and that was a game-changer compared to what a diesel submarine could do.

NARRATOR: The S1W prototype was unique.

Rickover demanded that it not just generate power, but that it operate safely underwater in the tight confines of a submarine.

JUSTIN SMITH: EBR1 had already lit lights.

He wasn't worried about that.

He wanted to see, can it fit inside of a submarine.

So they didn't just build a reactor, they built a reactor and put it in the shell of a submarine engine room because he wanted to see how are the engineers going to work with it?

Are they going to be able to get to different pieces?

Can it be done safely?

What happens when you have a problem what are your procedures going to be out in the middle of the Atlantic when you start to get some radiation leak in water?

So he set that up for S1W and the development time was insane.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: There was a pool of some 300,000 gallons that surrounded the prototype, and that was to test all the interfaces with the sea.

NARRATOR: The Navy proved the reactor could work, but Rickover was determined to push the limits.

Once the core had been replaced, he asked that S1W operate even longer.

DAVE HONABACH: The S1W prototype operated at 100-percent reactor power for 66 days and that was equivalent to circumnavigating the earth twice.

Pretty amazing accomplishment.

And that really proved the viability of nuclear power in a warship.

NARRATOR: That testing in Idaho proved the Navy could use nuclear power to operate safely and effectively.

That led to the world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus.

It was commissioned in 1954 and left the shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, in 1955.

JUSTIN SMITH: The Nautilus was terrifying for the Soviet Union.

It sailed underneath the polar ice cap without having to surface and their submarines couldn't follow it.

The United States had this ship now or this boat that could go out, get right up on the Soviet Union's front doorstep, and they wouldn't have any idea.

It was a strategic move as much as it was a technical move.

NARRATOR: With the submarine problem solved, the Naval Reactors Program immediately started working on a larger reactor to power an aircraft carrier.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: The Nautilus went to sea in 1955 and then the Nautilus went under the pole in 1958 under the Arctic ice.

At the same time we started building the A1W prototype in 1956.

NARRATOR: A1W, aircraft carrier, first generation, Westinghouse was built with Rickover's attention to detail and safety.

The reactor design would power the very first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, being built in 1958.

JUSTIN SMITH: When you look at the USS Enterprise, it was to have eight reactors and four engine rooms.

So he wanted to mock that up.

Where are we going to put the reactor, how are we going to shield it?

We're going to have a lot of heat off of it, how is that going to affect the crew?

How can engineers get to the reactors and run them in tandem?

But it's these questions that he wanted to solve in that environment that was completely controlled before he tried to build the ship.

It was light years ahead of what anybody else could imagine doing with technology.

And again, it was that driving personality of Rickover.

NARRATOR: How does a reactor power a naval ship?

Nuclear fission breaks apart atoms, creating heat, heat turns water to steam, and steam turns the drive shafts.

Steam on an aircraft carrier also helps aircraft take off, powering the catapults.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: We started up the first reactor in October of 1958, the second reactor in January of 1959.

And then Enterprise went to sea in 1961, an astounding record of pace and performance and commitment by the United States.

And that all started right there in Idaho.

NARRATOR: The USS Enterprise was retired in 2017.

It proved the concept for future carriers like the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower that's still in service today.

While the Enterprise had eight reactors, the Eisenhower has just two.

It can hold up to 5,000 sailors and launch up to four aircraft off its deck in roughly a minute.

In 2023, the Eisenhower, known as the "Mighty Ike", was sent to the Mediterranean.

It is scheduled to be retired in 2028 - replaced by a new USS Enterprise, currently under construction at an estimated cost of $13-billion.

Each new ship builds on the lessons learned in Idaho.

Those first-of-a-kind prototypes were also perfect for sailors who needed hands-on experience before being assigned to a ship.

DAVE HONABACH: Rickover believed that you needed to actually operate a nuclear power plant and to train on that nuclear power plant.

And then we showed up out at the Naval Reactors Facility, S1W prototype, the first six weeks was classroom training.

It was understanding all of the systems that you were going to have to understand and operate that were unique to the S1W prototype.

NARRATOR: A sailor at the time would attend basic training, then nuclear A-school before getting hands on training at S1W.

In that third phase, sailors were subjected to long hours of studying and operating a working reactor.

DAVE HONABACH: So a typical day was about 18 hours.

You would sleep, wake up the next day and go through your training, and you would do that literally until you ran out of food and then you'd come back on the bus, you'd replenish yourself, then you go back out there.

JUSTIN SMITH: Not everybody passed.

A lot of guys washed out because they didn't have the ability to do the math or they didn't have the mechanical ability.

CAPT.

GREG RING: I do remember getting there in like September of 1988 and leaving in March, and I think I was frozen for the entire six months.

I remember getting up, catching the bus at four in the morning, and then the 60-miles out to NRF.

And then you got off the bus and in my case, I went to S1W.

I think I can draw everything that I learned, you know almost 35-years ago.

That's how good the training was.

There was like a little central library if you want to call it, and you went up there and you checked out a manual or an operating procedure.

You take that back and you'd study and you learn about those things, and then you may walk into the actual prototype.

I've heard it compared to like a very elite college of four years, you know crammed into six months.

NARRATOR: Not everyone that went through prototype training was a sailor.

Some were civilians like Doug Lenio and Kelly French.

Lenio had just finished school at the University of Arizona in 1987.

DOUG LENIO: Westinghouse was recruiting down there and Idaho sounded like a fun place to be because I like the outdoors.

I was one of the first classes to actually be embedded with the naval officers.

I qualified on the plant and then turned around and started training Navy Students.

You've come from nuclear power school where they've trained you on the theory behind everything, so you understand that.

But now you're looking at the actual systems that you've looked at on the paper and you're looking at all these piping systems and electrical wires and you're trying to think, oh my gosh, I got to know how all this works and where everything is.

It's somewhat overwhelming at first.

People may not realize is how noisy of a place it was, because when the plants operating you have all kinds of rotating equipment.

There is a unique smell inside of a prototype having to do with a lot of the oils that are used in the machinery.

And those get into some of the lagging, it gets in there and it sort of creates this smell that's very unique.

KELLY FRENCH: I served at S1W from February of 1983 until the final shut down and a little bit beyond, February of 1990, I then transferred to the S5G prototype where I qualified again as an engineering officer of the watch.

NARRATOR: S5G, submarine, fifth generation, General Electric, is an advanced pressurized water reactor that lets the Navy evaluate the reactors' performance in simulated ocean conditions.

KELLY FRENCH: It looked like a portion of a submarine set in a basin that would rock and roll.

They would fill it with water and rock and roll.

But that was before my time.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: The prototype actually floated on the water, and we could incline that prototype or roll that prototype, so that we could test the performance of the reactor plant under more emblematic or prototypical sea conditions.

Really, really important for the Navy.

NARRATOR: By the time S5G was retired in 1995, the last of the prototypes in Idaho to go offline, 40,000 sailors had rotated through the Naval Reactors Facility.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: Idaho has been vitally important to us.

It's the birth of our program.

It's where we learned about the development of these technologies, where we trained 40,000 operators.

NARRATOR: Sailor training at the three prototypes ended in the mid-90s.

But the Naval Reactors Facility in the eastern Idaho desert remains active.

DAVE HONABACH: There's only one place that will process that fuel and that is at the Naval Reactors Facility.

And that is basically taking that spent fuel and placing it in a road ready condition to take it to the national repository.

Absolutely critical part of the mission.

As long as there is a nuclear-powered fleet, there's going to be a Naval Reactors Facility in order to process that fuel.

ADM. FRANK CALDWELL: Nuclear power provides our navy with phenomenal war-fighting advantage, but we have to respect the power and reactor.

We have to treat it with the proper stewardship and proper respect.

Our sailors live right next to a nuclear reactor.

They live and function near a nuclear reactor every single day.

So to do that, we have to design a system that is conservative by design.

And we can only do that by the trust that's been established and enabled.

And that trust is centered on, as I said, protecting our sailors, our workers, the local populations, and the environment.

There has never been a reactor accident in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, and nor has there ever been a release that has affected the environment.

NARRATOR: The United States isn't the only country using nuclear-powered ships.

But it has the most capable submarines thanks to research and development conducted in Idaho.

In 2024, the US Navy plans to commission the USS Idaho, a nuclear submarine that uses advanced reactors and acoustic technology developed right here in the state it was named for.

FORMER GOV.

DIRK KEMPTHORNE: How is it that Idaho, a landlocked state, has a nuclear submarine named Idaho?

If any state has a DNA connection to the nuclear navy, it is Idaho.

The very first nuclear ship ever made, the Nautilus, a nuclear submarine that Dwight Eisenhower used to send from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic for the first time ever under the Arctic.

That world said my word, the United States is back, it's a leader in science, it's the leader in the military.

NARRATOR: Former Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne is chairman of the USS Idaho Commissioning Committee.

He is responsible for bringing the crew to Idaho, and showing them the surprising role this landlocked state has played in developing submarine technology.

GOV.

DIRK KEMPTHORNE: The fact that the United States submarine force is the most silent in the world, well, that doesn't just happen.

That means you have the finest of technology.

Where does this technology come from?

Idaho!

Lake Pend Oreille, Bayview, the Acoustic Research Center.

Again, the role that Idaho plays in the well-being of the nation.

Making sure that our submarines are the most silent and most technologically advanced.

NARRATOR: One might wonder why the historic prototypes, with such a rich history of innovation, arent being turned into museums like EBR-1.

JUSTIN SMITH: These were nuclear testing facilities, and so you have contamination.

They were bringing in cores and taking out cores.

They operated for decades and the United States requires that we clean up our messes.

TRISH CANADAY: Those are unique, one of a kind properties that once lost are gone forever.

And so we need to make sure that the consultation results in mitigation thats commensurate with that impact.

SEN. MIKE CRAPO: And im glad there are people who are protecting this legacy and making sure we keep it for people forever.

(music) ANNOUNCER: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, devoted to preserving the spirit of Idaho.

From Anne Voilleque and Louise Nelson, from Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.