Editing Boiling water reactor (section)

=== Early concepts ===
The BWR concept was developed slightly later than the PWR concept. Development of the BWR started in the early 1950s, and was a collaboration between [[General Electric]] (GE) and several US national laboratories.

Research into nuclear power in the US was led by the three military services. The Navy, seeing the possibility of turning submarines into full-time underwater vehicles, and ships that could steam around the world without refueling, appointed [[Captain (naval)|Captain]] [[Hyman Rickover]] to run their nuclear power program. Rickover decided on the PWR route for the Navy, as the early researchers in the field of nuclear power feared that the direct production of steam within a reactor would cause instability, while they knew that the use of pressurized water would definitively work as a means of heat transfer. This concern led to the US's first research effort in nuclear power being devoted to the PWR, which was highly suited for naval vessels (submarines, especially), as space was at a premium, and PWRs could be made compact and high-power enough to fit into such vessels.

But other researchers wanted to investigate whether the supposed instability caused by boiling water in a reactor core would really cause instability. During early reactor development, a small group of engineers accidentally increased the reactor power level on an experimental reactor to such an extent that the water quickly boiled. This shut down the reactor, indicating the useful self-moderating property in emergency circumstances. In particular, [[Samuel Untermyer II]], a researcher at [[Argonne National Laboratory]], proposed and oversaw a series of experiments: the [[BORAX experiments]]—to see if a ''boiling water reactor'' would be feasible for use in energy production. He found that it was, after subjecting his reactors to quite strenuous tests, proving the safety principles of the BWR.<ref name=anl>{{Citation |title=Boiling Water Reactor Simulator with Passive Safety Systems - IAEA |page=14 |format=PDF (11 MB) |publisher=[[International Atomic Energy Agency|IAEA]] |date=October 2009 |url=http://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Downloads/Simulators/Advanced.BWR.Manual.2009-10.pdf |access-date=8 June 2012}}</ref>

Following this series of tests, GE got involved and collaborated with [[Argonne National Laboratory]]<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4115425|doi=10.2172/4115425|title=Nuclear Reactors Build, Being Built, or Planned in the United States as of June 30, 1970|year=1970|publisher=Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) |doi-access=free}}</ref> to bring this technology to market. Larger-scale tests were conducted through the late 1950s/early/mid-1960s that only partially used directly generated (primary) nuclear boiler system steam to feed the turbine and incorporated heat exchangers for the generation of secondary steam to drive separate parts of the turbines. The literature does not indicate why this was the case, but it was eliminated on production models of the BWR.