Fermi 1 - Newport, MI
N 41° 57.634 W 083° 15.467
17T E 312895 N 4647862
Fermi 1 was commissioned in August 1966 in Newport, Michigan.
Waymark Code: WM167YK
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 05/28/2022
Views: 1
Fermi 1 was the United States' only demonstration-scale breeder reactor, built during the 1950s at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station on the western shore of Lake Erie south of Detroit, Michigan. It used the sodium-cooled fast reactor cycle, in which liquid sodium metal is used as the primary coolant instead of more typical nuclear reactor designs which are cooled with water. Sodium cooling allows for a more compact core with surplus neutrons, which are used to produce more fission fuel by converting a surrounding "blanket" of 238U into 239Pu which can be fed back into a reactor. At full power, it would generate 430 MW of heat (MWt), or about 150 MW of electricity (MWe).
Fermi 1 was plagued with construction delays and cost overruns during the 10 year process to commissioning. On October 5th, 1966 Fermi 1 suffered a partial meltdown when a sodium cooling channel had become blocked by a piece of sheet metal which led to the melting of four fuel assemblies. This event was documented in the book
We Almost Lost Detroit.
After years of investigation and determination of the issue surrounding the event, Fermi 1 was allowed to reload fuel and sodium by the Atomic Energy Commission and restart occurred July of 1970. The plant only operated for an additional 2 years due to the AEC denying Fermi 1 a license extension. The decommission date was December 31, 1975. Fermi 2 operates on the same site on Lake Erie with its license set to expire in 2045.