In Search of a Critical Moment — The Story of ZPPR

This film tells the story of the Zero Power Plutonium Reactor (ZPPR), which was a special test reactor in Idaho designed to supply information essential to the development of economic fast-breeder, central-station, nuclear-power plants. The film shows the construction of the ZPPR by the Argonne National Laboratory, its many safety features, plutonium handling and storage, the computer that analyzes the data obtained by the reactor, and the fuel loading and attainment of reactor criticality. Produced by the Atomic Energy Commission's Argonne National Laboratory. The reactor operated between 1969 and 1990. At one point, the word “plutonium” in its name was changed to “physics” for PR reasons, making it the Zero Power Physics Reactor. These days, the ZPPR facility is a part of the Idaho National Lab. It has been decommissioned and is being converted to other uses, e.g., for the National Reactor Innovation Center. Read more about ZPPR at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Po... The digitization of this 1970 color 16 mm film in 4K resolution was funded by Nick Touran of whatisnuclear.com via film from the National Archives in December 2022. He has a 345 GB file in ProRes format if anyone needs it without as much compression. Courtesy: National Archives and Records Administration