Arco, Idaho

Our first sighting of the town of Arco while pulling in for the night was this cliff overlooking the town. I'm like what the hell? Talked to a lady in the morning and she said every high school graduating class put their year on the cliff...we saw as far back as 1921.

Arco turned out to be an interesting town for its size. Back in the 50's it was the first town in the world to have electricity supplied by nuclear power.

Very near Arco, the town has "another" worlds first...the explosion and melt down of SL-1, a nuclear reactor in 1961. The reactor was being restarted after some modifications when in 4 milliseconds it went critical and exploded...killing three workers. It was very near this building.

I was able to get through two security rooms before being blocked. The gentlemen I got stopped by went to great lengths to explain what he could. He told me that in the 1950's two aircraft nuclear engines were developed for the B-36. It was a failure because they could not shield the radiation.

Donna caught me leaving the building.

I asked the man at the desk what "Specific Manufacturing Capability" means...his answer was

"none of your business" (in a nice way)