The SL-1 accident is the only fatal nuclear reactor event to ever occur on US soil.
An earth-shattering explosion at the Stationary Low-Power Plant Number 1 (SL-1) in January 1961 saw all three technicians on staff killed during what was meant to be routine maintenance of the government lab’s nuclear reactor.
Following a painstaking operation, the men’s bodies were retrieved – at the cost of 790 others being exposed to radiation out in Idaho‘s Lost River desert.
The three men were then wrapped in hundred pounds of lead, interned in steel coffins and buried under a slab of concrete to prevent any further spread. The lab was also considered lost and was buried a few hundred yards away.
But rumors surrounding the incident still swirl today, with some speculating the disaster was in fact a murder-suicide triggered by a sordid squabble after one of the crew members engaged in an affair with another’s wife.
Indeed, one report claims that the man responsible for the explosion had received a phone call from his wife asking for a divorce just minutes earlier – while the co-worker accused of sleeping with his wife was later found pinned to the ceiling directly above the blown reactor.
Hellbound and Down 