East Idaho News
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How the Idaho Falls campus for Idaho National Lab began
Posted
February 28, 2024
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February 28, 2024
1,067
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3:15Now Playing#eastidahonews #INL75 #idahofalls
IDAHO FALLS - Establishing a nuclear testing site in eastern Idaho put America on the threshold of its greatest era of development.
That's how a 1949 Post Register editorial described the launch of the Nuclear Reactor Testing Station, the predecessor to what is now Idaho National Laboratory. The desert site sat on 890 square miles of land 50 miles west of Idaho Falls that had previously been used as a naval proving ground to test reconditioned battle guns taken from ships fighting in the Pacific during World War II.
America's use of the world's first nuclear weapons four years earlier had brought an end to the war. Two bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 210,000 people. Japan surrendered and that set the stage for a U.S. victory. It also "signaled the arrival of a new atomic age."
On Feb. 18, 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission decided to pick up where the Navy left off. The former proving ground was selected as the site for a nuclear research facility. But this time, it wouldn't be used to test or develop weapons. Its sole purpose was to find ways to use atomic energy for peaceful means.
With roughly 6,200 employees, it's the area's largest employer and the average person benefits from INL research, whether they realize it or not.
"As a community, our lives revolve around and are dependent on electricity, and we all want to feel protected and secure. The work taking place at INL ensures that happens," INL spokeswoman Lori McNamara tells EastIdahoNews.com.
This is the story of the INL's beginnings in Idaho Falls.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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