b'P ROVING THE P RINCIPLEto , the IDO had to supply central ser- tials in the benefits each contractor career stalled with one contractor couldrvices to many laboratories and contrac- offered its NRTS employees. The daily be reinvigorated by a transfer to anoth-tors simultaneously. To make things task of IDO management was to define erwithout the employee having toeven more complicated, other AEC field and refine the nature of all these rela- pull up roots and move the family toof fices actually had cognizance over a tionships and determine who would do another state.number of NRTS activities. what inside vs.outside the contractorsfences. This was a thoroughly impossi- In 1950 the builders were busyat leastFor example, an AEC field office in ble job, but it was done. 2 trying to be busy, for they often wereChicago managed the AECs relation- ahead of blueprints. Laborers began fill-ship with the Argonne National Over time, an accumulation of loyalties ing up barracks in Arco and Atomic CityLaboratory, including its Idaho experi- to a home lab and small frictions over (the new name for Midway), and unionments. The Navys submarine projects how the Idaho landlord preferred to halls were busy. The first reactor, had a similar relationship with the AEC handle things tended to produce sepa- Argo n n e s, already was under construc-office in Pittsburgh. Thus, in addition to rate cultures among the separate com- tion. As would be the pattern for most ofcoordinating the activities of its own plexes that grew up on the desert. But the reactors to come, the complicatedcontractors, the IDO had to coordinate common experiences among all work began with a team of physicistswith a whole cocktail of sister field employeessuch as being neighbors in and others at the home lab, whooffices, other laboratories and their town and riding the bus together to designed the reactor and the supportdirectors and contractors. Johnston had worktended to overlay separate loy- buildings it would need. When the AE Cto develop a consistent approach to alties with a site-wide sensibility. Many approved the project, it selected anlabor relations and cope with differen- an employee found, for example, that a architect/engineering (A/E) firm toCross-section schematic of the EBR-I reactor core.Fuel rods in the center were made of enricheduranium (U-235). The blanket surrounding themwere rods made of ordinary uranium.4 6'