A very cool story and set of photos of the Russian Nuke plant at Obninsk.
From English Russia:
The World�s First Nuclear Power PlantHere are three of the images -- lots more at the website:
We all got used to the nuclear power plants, even if having some precautions of the phenomena itself they look like have been here for quite a while. But when did this nuclear energy extraction thing has started?
The first nuclear power plant has been built in Russia or Soviet Union as it was called at that times. It has been built in high hush-hush mode, even the construction workers on site didn�t know what exactly they were doing there.
Then on June 27th, 1954 Russian radio stations knocked over their listeners across the vast country and worldwide when they broadcasted the news like �In Soviet Union, thanks to the joint effort of scientists and engineers the construction of the world�s first nuclear power plant with an output power of 5000 kW. The power plant construction has been completed and already produced electricity for the local Soviet agricultural objects�.
Today let�s see how this shrine of nuclear power looks in our days.
The fuel capsules with Uriniaum were transported in place with this special crane. Because of excessive radiation levels while on this job the crane has extra thick walls and the 50 cm (20 inch) thick quarz glass so that the operator could visually control the process of transportation. They didn�t have the video cams at that times.Although this was the first nuke built specifically for generating electrical power, it is not the first plant to do so -- here is the Experimental Breeder EBR-1 at the Idaho National Laboratory generating a couple hundred watts in 1951:
