Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Bldg. 470

The Nuclear Engineering Test Facility resulted from a 1954 Air Force initiative to develop a nuclear powered aircraft. Construction began in 1956 and continued despite cancellation of the nuclear propulsion project the next year. When completed in 1960, the light water cooled test reactor was the Air Force's only research reactor and the seventh largest of its kind in the nation. It had a ten megawatt capacity and could accommodate a full scale jet engine. Its internal facilities were not completed until 1965, the same year the Air Force Institute of Technology accepted operational control and safety responsibility for the reactor. The reactor's first nuclear chain reaction was achieved in April 1965. AFIT, civilian institutions, and Department of Defense agencies used the reactor for a variety of projects, ranging from biomedical studies to solid-state electronics. The reactor was operated for the last time on June 12, 1970 and decommissioned in June 1971.