Where a crown jewel once stood in NASA’s ambitious plans for human space exploration now lies a decontaminated nuclear grave.
Current laws bar NASA from building or researching fueled nuclear devices. Yet in a bygone era five decades ago, the space agency’s future was dependent on one: the Plum Brook Reactor Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.
NASA turned on its first, last and only nuclear fission test reactor in 1961 to research nuclear-powered airplanes, then eventually nuclear-powered space rockets. But the mounting cost of the Vietnam War and waning interest in manned space exploration led President Richard Nixon to mothball the facility in 1973.
via Wired
June 21, 2012
