ORNL will soon be able to support AEC's effort toward development of nuclear power that will be competitive with electricity produced from plants using conventional fuels. The Experimental Gas-Cooled Reactor (EGCR) program started in 1959 and scheduled for completion in 1964 will hopefully provide this support. March is the planned delivery of a 395 ton containment (pressure) vessel which traveled by barge 3600 miles from Pennsylvania to the ORNL installation site. The nuclear core for the eventual power plant will hold about 165 tons of graphite and uranium to produce over 22,000 kilowatts of electrical power.
ORNL shipments of 12,864 radioisotopes during 1962 hits an all-time record; which includes the largest single shipment in history of 225,000 curies of strontium 90, a heat source for a thermoelectric generator to power a floating weather station for the US Navy. More than two million curies of radioisotopes have been shipped since August 1946, when one millicurie of carbon-14, was purchased by the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
A model of the world's first nuclear reactor, designed and fabricated at ORNL, was shown to President Kennedy when several of the original Fermi group, visited the White House. The President suggested that the model be placed in the Smithsonian Institution. On March 1st, Dr. Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the AEC, made the presentation to the Institution as a symbol of the successful harnessing of this new source of energy. The model was cast of plastic and wood, measured eight inches square at the base, by nine inches high and contained a one-inch cube of uranium that was part of the fuel from the first assembly that achieved the world's first sustained nuclear chain reaction on December 2nd, 1942.
ORNL marks 20 years of progress. On February 1, 1943, ground was broken by Stone and Webster Construction Company for erection of the world's second reactor, the X-10 Pile. By 1962, the X-10 had operated nearly 20 years and the Lab's 2000 Area, the 4500 Area and numerous other facilities had been completed and ORNL was one of the largest nuclear energy research establishments in the world.