Granite monument - CP-2 + CP-3 (Plot A) Burial Site

 waste, nuclear reactor, interesting place

Here lie remnants of the worlds first nuclear reactor. This is the one found in the history books originally constructed under the squash courts at University of Chicago [aka CP1]. CP-1 was later moved here in this once top-secret hilltop wartime physics lab and was designated CP-2. It was buried by digging around the building and collapsing the reactor into the pit. The site is marked with an inscribed granite block.

This is a neat poorly traveled historical spot not easily accessible to the public except on foot or via bicycle. I recommend ingress along the original [now gated] asphalt access road that may be found a few hundred feet south of the entrance to the Red Gate Woods. Park in the Red Gate Woods lot and traverse the muddy trails to the southwest a few hundred feet until the asphalt road is encountered or enter at your own risk adjacent to the high speed Archer Road traffic.

It became declassified and demilitarized as the early Argonne National Laboratory site immediately after WWII. It was reportedly chosen after a University of Chicago physicist rode his horse in these very beautiful wooded hills. They apparently were to him reminiscent of the Argonne Woods in France. In the 1950s Argonne Lab moved westward to its current digs on the north side of the same Des Plaines River Valley through which the Louis Joliet Expedition was guided by a Native American boy in the winter of 1674 when this territory was claimed by France.

'CP' denotes 'Chicago Pile' and reflects the early use of a simple neatly stacked pile of graphite bricks employed to slow neutrons and shield large-brained primates from the radiation they create. The water employed in the CP3 design was simply a coolant design innovation although the heavy water produced was harvested as well.

These locations are known as site A and plot M; Results of monitoring are reported and available, as of 2004: www.anl.gov/Community_and_Environment/sitea2006.pdf

Thankfully the contaminated public wells at Red Gate Woods have long been disabled, but one can presume that some users ingested contaminated water prior to the 1970s. Jim M 2006

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgical_Laboratory
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Nuclear_Reservation
www.lm.doe.gov/land/sites/il/sitea/sitea.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_A/Plot_M_Disposal_Site