The Vallecitos Nuclear Center is a nuclear research facility, and the site of a former

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is a provider of advanced reactors and nuclear services. It is headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States. Established in June 2007, GEH is a nuclear alliance created by General Electric and Hitach ...

electricity-generating nuclear power plant in unincorporated

Alameda County Alameda County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,682,353, making it the 7th-most populous county in the state and 21st most populous nationally. The county seat is Oakland. Alam ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, United States. The facility is approximately east of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, under jurisdiction of the

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the E ...

's Region IV. The Vallecitos

boiling water reactor A boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of light water nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is a design different from a Soviet graphite-moderated RBMK. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nu ...

(VBWR) was the first privately owned and operated nuclear power plant to deliver significant quantities of electricity to a public utility grid. During the period October 1957 to December 1963, it delivered approximately 40,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. This reactor—a light-water moderated and cooled,

enriched uranium Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238U ...

reactor using stainless steel-clad, plate-type fuel—was a pilot plant and test bed for fuel, core components, controls, and personnel training for the

Dresden Nuclear Power Plant Dresden Generating Station (also known as Dresden Nuclear Power Plant or Dresden Nuclear Power Station) is the first privately financed nuclear power plant built in the United States. Dresden 1 was activated in 1960 and retired in 1978. Operati ...

, a

Commonwealth Edison Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquois County on the south to ...

station built in

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

five years later. The plant was originally a collaborative effort of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

and Pacific Gas and Electric Company, with

Bechtel Corporation Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia. , the '' Engineering News-Record'' ranked Bechtel as ...

serving as engineering contractor. Samuel Untermyer II, the General Electric engineer responsible for the initial design of the VBWR, had performed much of the conceptual research at Argonne National Laboratory while conducting heat transfer and nuclear physics experiments, including the

BORAX experiments The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.

. Vallecitos Power Plant held the

US Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President H ...

's "Power Reactor License No. 1". The main power generating facilities closed in 1963. The discovery of an

active fault An active fault is a fault that is likely to become the source of another earthquake sometime in the future. Geologists commonly consider faults to be active if there has been movement observed or evidence of seismic activity during the last 10,0 ...

running beneath the facility led to the closure of its most productive reactors in 1977. The Vallecitos site includes the Radioactive Materials Laboratory where post-irradiation examinations are carried out. A small 100- kilowatt research reactor called the "Nuclear Test Reactor" (NTR, NRC License R-33) is still in operation at the site. It utilizes U-AL alloy fuel, and is currently used for nondestructive material imaging. Vallecitos also fabricates radioactive source materials used in medicine and industry, under a license issued by the State of California.NRC to meet with public in California to discuss GE Vallecitos Nuclear Center

References

External links

Video of Opening of Vallecitos Nuclear Center
(archived)
Nukeworker description of Vallecitos
(archived)
EVESR Nuclear Superheat Fuel Development Project, First Quarterly Report (1963)
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