Ted Cruz campaigned here in Idaho last week, but only up in our panhandle.
Idaho is closer to two separate states than one; the panhandle in the north has always been semi-isolated from the rest of the state by a wilderness so vast and mountainous that it will never be populated, and there is only one highway, a narrow 2-lane, that stays within our boundary that connects the north to the rest of the state. North Idaho is smaller in population and size than the other 2/3 of the state, and has its own culture and traditions.
160 years ago, the panhandle, rich in minerals and covered in forests, was where our state’s economy was the wealthiest- the mines there were the reason President Lincoln created the Idaho Territory during the Civil War. Lincoln didn’t want our gold and silver to fall into Confederate control, as Arizona’s did.
Nowadays, those mines, which still have plenty of ore in them, have shut down or operate at a low level. Gold and silver, as commodities, especially silver, aren’t as critical to our security and wealth as they once were. The panhandle now has become the poor relative in the family; all Idaho’s vast agriculture, high technology, and most of her citizens live in South Idaho, a region that economically, begins north of Boise and extends down to our southern border of Utah.
S. Idaho has mines and forests, too. Including what may become the only rare earth mine in the U.S. if it proves out. Southern Idaho is home to the Idaho National Laboratory.
The INL was created shortly after the end of WWII, when the government realized that the U.S. needed a facility located far away from Chicago, Berkley, and the other cities where our nuclear scientists lived and worked. The lab’s mission was to test everything that was on paper, making actual atomic projects for peaceful purposes a reality. We had labs that tested A-bombs and everything connected to them, but we had no testing facilities for building a reactor that could power a submarine. The Defense Dept. didn’t even know if one could be built.
But the Navy had a crazy Admiral who was sure such a reactor was possible; Hyman G. Rickover. He was cranky, impossible to work with, but he singlehandedly gathered up his own little bunch of physicists and engineers, and they came up with a teeny little reactor they knew would work. All they needed was a place to build it, and the Navy happened to have the perfect spot.
It was out in the middle of Idaho’s Arco desert, a high sagebrush steppe that once had a lot of volcanic activity, making it impossible to inhabit in most of it, but habitable in many small spots. One of them was a gunnery range created to test fire all the 16 inch main guns that were used on our battleships. All those guns were manufactured in Pocatello, Idaho, just south of the Arco desert. The navy laid a railroad track out to a good flat spot where the big guns could shoot their first shells. The area had no population and was larger than the 60-mile range of the guns.
Since the A-bomb made those big guns obsolete, Rickover realized that was the place where his reactor could be built and tested. Arco, Idaho, a little town of about 800 people, and it’s the closest of all the surrounding towns to the site. The INL site became the first place a nuclear power plant was built, and Arco became the first city to be lit by atomic power.
Rickover’s design worked. Very well. The USS Nautilus’ power plant was an identical copy of the the prototype, and the prototype went on to train our sailors in operation and maintenance for the next 45 years. president Jimmy Carter trained there as an Ensign, along with thousands of other sailors.
And, in the years to follow, all our commercial nuclear power plants used the same design, scaled up to huge proportions. The INL became the center where everything connected to a power plant was tested, and its mission expanded far beyond the Navy in just a few years. Throughout the Cold War, all the other nuclear sites in the West got more funding and attention, but the INL chugged along, ensuring that every new nuclear plant in our nation was safe, and would have long productive lives. The Russians, British, French, Japan, and all the other nations that build their own nuclear technologies once scoffed at the INL’s ‘obsession’ with safety. They said our generators were far too overbuilt.
A big mistake, as it turned out. Cherynoble will never be a safe place again, but the Arco desert, Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, Washington, and Los Alamos still are. All thanks to the INL’s safety procedures.
The Idaho National Laboratory lies 60 miles west of Idaho Falls in an area called the South East Corridor. Idaho Falls became the operational center for the INL site. The site itself is still located out on the desert, and that’s where all the actual testing is done. Everything nuclear that’s tested is done with very small scale reactors, all designed for specific purposes. Nothing there has ever been developed for nuclear weaponry, although some tank artillery that used depleted uranium for hardening the shells was once tested there in the 80s. That’s as close to the nuclear weaponry that the INL ever went.
Idaho Falls is in the center of a long string of cities large and small that lie alongside the state’s borders of Wyoming and Montana. The Corridor is where much of our state’s largest agriculture is located, along with some of our largest cities and where some of our most advanced technology centers are located. At one time, the INL employed 10,000 workers, and the U.S. had a few other, much smaller testing facilities. The University of Chicago had one; it was our first university that led the nation in nuclear theory, and it spun off a small corporation that directed much of the INL’s mission in the early days. But all the other testing facilities for nuclear generation are now closed.
The INL is the United State’s sole remaining nuclear safety laboratory.
But that was only a small part of the INL. Much more importantly, the United States has never suffered a complete nuclear disaster like Fukujima or Chernobyl due to the efforts of the INL. The INL continues to lead the world in other areas connected to modern experiments in nuclear energy applied to peaceful purposes.
And Ted Cruz wants to close it down. Or did, until he finally learned the Dept. of Energy didn’t have much to do with oil production.
The Dept. of Energy controls the United States’ electrical power supplies, our electrical grid, and everything that’s connected to electricity on a large scale. No matter what the fuel that powers the generators may be. Cruz is totally ignorant of the purposes all the Departments he wants to do away with are. He got a short and harsh education, though, and cancelled his plan to show up in Southern Idaho. Good thing, too, as the folks down here would have not been kind with him. The INL site still remains one of Idaho’s largest and most reliable employers, even though it once took a back seat to Los Alamos and the others.
Cruz was in safe territory here when he made a quick stop in the panhandle. The area has become a very popular retirement spot for retirees, especially conservatives, because it’s both beautiful and the costs of living are low. Retirement and tourism are now major economic drivers there, but neither contribute as much to Idaho’s economy as the INL. Over the years, the INL has been a major stabilizer for our economy, which is vulnerable to the swings that are ever present in agriculture and all our other industries.
Currently, the INL employs about 5,000 Idahoans directly, and at least as many more indirectly in private businesses who supply goods and services to the site. While the INL’s mission is still nuclear testing and safety, it has also been charged to develop other alternative energy sources of all kinds ever since the late 1980s as well.
The batteries in all our electric cars came from the INL’s efforts. The very first modern electric power car was built here. The INL has been a leader in geothermal and solar power as well.
But most importantly, the INL has developed all our standards of safe storage of nuclear waste. it developed most of the ways and procedures to contain nuclear contamination from the beginning. It’s scientists and workers now know more about nuclear waste than anywhere else in the world. Glassification, the primary means to contain waste from leakage, was developed there decades ago, and other, safer, smaller, better means of storage are still being worked on at the INL right now.
The INL is the reason why 3 Mile Island didn’t become a Chernobyl. In fact, we will never have another 3 Mile Island because the INL dismantled part of the 3 Mile Island reactor, studied the failure, replicated it in much smaller scale, and developed the changes needed to correct the causes. And then tested them before they wrote the new regulations that the Dept. of Energy now requires. The rest of the world now uses the SLAM- the procedures that will instantly shut down a runaway reactor completely. SLAM was developed in that building in the picture.
In fact, in that same building, the INL is currently working on new ways to recover re-usable materials that can be used in our power nuclear plants which would largely eliminate the need for the massive storage problems used-up nuclear fuel rods now create. If they are successful, those rods can be recycled until they are almost completely used up, which would eliminate over ¾ of the materials that are now collecting, sitting in cooling pools all over the nation, while Congress bickers over a repository for them. The rest of the world will also use their fuel rods in the same way, which will create thousands of new American jobs, because only we have the know-how.
The INL has also actively spun off much of its expertise into private businesses. Much of it’s work has developed better control systems for non-nuclear purposes, valves and piping that are safe at all levels, cooling and heating systems that are safe at all levels, and applications that have made solar panels flexible and much smaller. And much more.
Here in Idaho Falls where I live, the INL turned my hometown from being the home of a bunch of spud farmers and cowboys to a city where lots of the best chemists, physicists, electrical engineers, and all the skilled workers who build things with advanced materials live. Once here, most stay after their working days are over, as Idaho is a great place to live for a person who loves the outdoors.
Cruz backtracked once a staffer informed him of a bit of the importance of the INL to the United States. Cruz said he would move the INL’s management into the Dept. of Defense. The idiot still thinks only about our weaponry.
Since most of the folks who live in the panhandle don’t know a damned thing about the INL or it’s importance to the state and the nation, Cruz was in safe territory there. The folks in our 1st district like Cruz; his buddy in the House, Raul Labrador, is the 1st district’s Representative in the House.
Down there in the 2nd district, Cruz would have been pilloried for his stupidity by conservatives who are just as strong as those in the north. Lots of them depend on the INL for their living.
Meanwhile, the United States is still reliant on nuclear generated electricity, produced by reactors that are all 30 years old or older. Reactors that were built in obsolete designs, back in the day when it was thought that bigger was always better. States like New York and California still depend on those reactors to light up their cities and countrysides, but they all have time limits. Nuclear energy is hard on all the equipment. There are miles of piping, thousands of valves, miles of wiring, and control systems that are functional but obsolete that millions of Americans rely on every day to keep their electricity flowing.
Alternative energies won’t ever fill the gap that’s left when those reactors reach their last days of production. Europe has become the leader in new reactor design, and they learned that the philosophies of the past aren’t as good as we once believed. Bigger turned out not to be better. Smaller is better. The economies of scale proved to be false when it comes to reactors.
They have many labs they use for experimental processes and procedures. We have only one- the INL.
But the INL is the grand-daddy of them all. Like it or not, nuclear power generation is still a vital part of our reality and will be for the foreseeable future. The one thing that will remain constant is american reactors will always be the safest ever built, at least for as long as the INL exists.
We may end up having our next generation being built by French, British or even Indian companies, but they will have to be constructed to our standards, and the INL’s standards have always been mighty high, both in safety and reliability.
Ted comes from a cowboy state, but I guess Texas doesn’t have the old saying Idaho cowboys have: “That guy just shit his chaps, and now he has to ride in them.” Cruz may wear the boots, but he ain’t got the horse, so he has never known the misery of shitty chaps.
And Idaho, at least most of it, isn’t his friend after all. Sorry Raffy- you should have done your homework before you came up.