This 1962 film about the Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant features Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan — who often worked for General Electric in this era — as its narrator. The film was shown at the plant’s visitor’s center for many years, touting the benefits of atomic fission and showing the inner workings of the power plant. Workers are shown looking down into the reactor where a lead covered “head” shields them from radioactivity. Beneath this head are 56 fuel bundles, containing 144 rods filled with enriched uranium pellets. The power from this single load would roughly equal that which could be generated by burning 260,000 tons of coal.
Big Rock Point was a nuclear power plant near Charlevoix, Michigan. Big Rock operated from 1962 to 1997. It was owned and operated by Consumers Power, now known as Consumers Energy. Its boiling water reactor was made by General Electric (GE) and was capable of producing 67 megawatts of electricity. Bechtel Corporation was the primary contractor.
Big Rock was Michigan’s first nuclear power plant and the nation’s fifth. It also produced Cobalt 60 for the medical industry from 1971 to 1982.
Ground was broken on July 20, 1960. Construction was completed in 29 months at a cost of $27.7 million. Its license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was issued on August 29, 1962. The reactor first went critical on September 27 and the first electricity was generated on December 8, 1962.
Consumers Energy had previously announced that Big Rock Point’s operating license would not be renewed when it expired on May 31, 2000. However, economics proved in January 1997 that it was not feasible to keep Big Rock Point running to the license’s expiration date.
The reactor was scrammed for the last time on at 10:33 a.m. EDT on August 29, 1997, 35 years to the day after its license had been issued. The last fuel was removed from the core on September 20. Decontamination was completed in 1999.
Because of its contributions to the nuclear and medical industries, the American Nuclear Society named Big Rock Point a Nuclear Historic Landmark.
The 235,000-pound (107,000 kg) reactor vessel was removed on August 25, 2003 and shipped to Barnwell, South Carolina on October 7, 2003.
All of Big Rock Point’s 500-acre (200 ha), including the 130-foot (40 m) tall spherical containment structure, has been torn down. Other than eight spent fuel casks, there are no signs that the site was home to a nuclear power plant.
Decommissioning costs totaled $390,000,000.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
