1963: Closing of the Graphite Reactor | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxne... - 0 views
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In this remember-when photograph, a big crowd gathered on Nov. 4, 1963 to witness the shutdown of the historic Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge. Note the relative dearth of women in the crowd. The Graphite Reactor, of course, was built during World War II as a prototype facilitiy for production of plutonium. It was the world's first continuously operated nuclear reactor and went critical for the first time in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 4, 1943. The reactor operated for 20 years, contributing greatly to the nation's development of radioisotopes for medicine and other uses and for pioneering work with neutron-scattering experiments, etc.