Many of its new employees came from an organic chemistry program in Idaho, or from Canoga Park, California, where the fuel rods were built. When Piqua agreed to build the plant, it gave up a lot of local control. They put it on the highest point, and it was an ideal location for a reactor shell.” “You had the river on one side, but on the other side you had a gravel pit. “It was in an area that basically would never get flooded,” Reid explains. I also talked to Bret Reid, a long-time employee at Piqua Power, who says the location Piqua proposed was pretty ideal. “John Gallagher served as president of American Public Power Association, and he was able to go to Washington and somehow lobby to get the facility built here.” So why did the AEC choose Piqua? Piqua’s current power director, Ed Krieger, told me it most likely has to do with the utilities director at the time, John Gallagher, who had some national connections. Using a molten waxy compound instead of water to cool the uranium fuel rods meant that the radiation was more insulated, and that people could work inside the reactor while it was running. The Piqua plant was also part of an experiment in using an organic compound as a coolant. Using an organic compound as a coolant meant that people could work inside the reactor while it was running. Credit Piqua Library Local History Department Ground floor of the reactor building during the 1960s.
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