History
Since 1951, fifty-two reactors have been built on the grounds of what was originally the Atomic Energy Commission’s National Reactor Testing Station, currently the location of Idaho National Laboratory. Constructed in 1967, the ATR is the second-oldest of three reactors still in operation at the site. Its primary function is to intensely bombard samples of materials and fuels with neutrons to simulate long-term exposure to high levels of radiation, as would be present in a commercial nuclear reactor. The ATR is one of only four test reactors in the world with this capability. The reactor also produces rare isotopes for use in medicine and industry.
Read more about this topic: Advanced Test Reactor
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)