Vacation Day 3 - Atoms and Caves

On our penultimate day in Arco we hit some more local attractions and finished up everything we could do at Craters of the Moon.

We slept in a little bit later before going over to the cafe for our breakfast.  After just a couple days we are already spoiled by having our breakfast made for us every day! When we finished breakfast we got on the road to go visit EBR-1, the world’s first nuclear power plant.

EBR-1 was about 20 minutes east of Arco.  On the way there we stopped at a rest area with a couple of historical markers.  The first was for the lost rivers of the Snake River plains.  There are several rivers that just suddenly appear out of the ground, flow for a few miles, and then vanish into the ground again.  The rivers are traveling through lava tubes under the surface.  The seconds marker commemorates Idaho National Laboratory for its contributions to nuclear and materials technology, both wartime and peaceful applications.

A couple miles further down the road was the turn off for the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, the first nuclear power plant. It was easy to see why this site was chosen for this and other nuclear research; there is nothing for miles and miles. EBR-1 was a research reactor used to prove Fermi’s theory that a reactor could produce more fuel than it consumed, among other experiments.

All over the structure and around it there were constant reminders that this really was a functioning nuclear reactor that generated dangerous radiation at one time. There were signs warning of fixed contamination (surface contamination that cannot be removed), radiation badges all over the place, and even the dumpster had a warning message.

The tour was a self-guided walk through the various working parts of the reactor.  Throughout the tour we were educated on basic nuclear theory as well as how the reactor worked. We saw the control room, the reactor core, fuel rods, the turbine/generator, equipment used to handle “hot” material, etc.  It was a fascinating tour with an amazing amount of history.

Almost every piece of EBR-1 was brand new technology, from the core design to the cooling system. At 1:50 pm on December 20, 1951, it made history by lighting up 4 light bulbs. The next day it produced enough electricity to light the entire building.

The reactor was great fun, but that wasn't all. Across the parking lot was the remnant of one of the strangest and most incredible military projects of the 1950s and ‘60s – the nuclear powered aircraft.  The plan was to design an enormous bomber capable of staying aloft for a week at a time, using an atomic jet engine. After a billion dollars, the project was cancelled due to the expense and impracticality, but we realized the benefits of a great deal of research into high temperature materials.

After we left EBR-1, we drove back through Arco on our way to Craters of the Moon. As we were passing through the center of town, I saw the conning tower of a giant submarine in a small park and decided to pull over to take a look. It turned out that this is the actual sail of the SSN Hawkbill. We happened to arrive just as one of the guides was arriving to open up a small exhibit associated with the Hawkbill sail. The Idaho Science Center/Energy Museum was devoted to the nuclear history of the United States, with a focus on the part that Idaho National Labs and Arco played and still plays in it. our guide, Clay Condit, used to work at INL as a nuclear engineer. He was involved in the creation of the first nuclear submarines, training the sub crews, and many other pieces of nuclear history that originated there in Idaho.

After seeing the Hawkbill and chatting with Clay for some time about everything from the Cold War to modern nuclear energy, we left Arco once more for Craters of the Moon.  When we got to the park we headed straight to the caves area and started down the trail.  There are four caves you can visit, and we saw them all. Like all of the other caves in the region, they were all lava tubes in various sizes and configurations.  All of them are accessed by climbing down a collapsed piece of the tube that has formed a giant hole in the ground.

The first cave was Dewdrop Cave; it was fairly small and only required a flashlight at the farthest corner.  Most of the cave was visible from the outside.

The next cave was Boy Scout Cave. This cave was huge and pitch black. The cave was in two pieces; we entered the easy half first. We still had to crawl through a low opening to get in, but once inside we were able to stand up. The only light was from our headlamps. The floor of the cave was choked with aa lava, and it was soaking wet and even frozen in some places, making the footing treacherous. The cave continued for about 800 feet, which seemed like at least a mile as we inched along with nothing but a small circle of light.

We spent about 40 minutes exploring the cave before climbing back out.  As we were leaving the cave, I hit my head on the ceiling, which is made of extremely sharp lava.  Of course I split my scalp open and let blood start running down my face.  We made it out and got out our first aid kit and used some gauze pads to clean up the blood.  Luckily it was a superficial wound and stopped bleeding quickly, because we still had another piece of the cave to explore.

The second part of Boy Scout Cave required us to enter through an opening so small we had to remove our backpacks and push them ahead of us as we crawled in.  Once inside, we were in a large room with no obvious way out.  We finally realized that to continue on we had to “low crawl”, or squirm on our stomachs for many yards to get to the next room we could stand up in.  We decided not to continue on and crawled back out into the sunlight, thankfully without injury this time.

After another short hike on the surface, the next cave was called Beauty Cave and had a huge entrance that we could walk right in to.  The floor of the cave was level and smooth, other than occasional cracks. This cave went back a couple hundred feet; enough that we needed our headlamps again, but we could still see the light of the entrance behind us.

After Beauty Cave, we walked back on the surface  to a fork in the trail and continued on to the last cave, Indian Cave.  This cave is truly enormous, 30' feet high, 50 feet wide and 800 feet long.  There were enough holes in the ceiling from roof collapses to light the entire tunnel.

At the end of Indian Cave, we emerged back out on the surface away from the mail trail. We hiked back across the lava field and then made our way back to the Hummer.

With everything else at Craters of the Moon closed for construction, we had finished doing everything in the park we could quite a bit earlier than we expected. We decided to go back to the camper and relax for the rest of the evening and give Stacie a chance to catch up on some studying.

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