In 1961, when the Army's SL-1 nuclear reactor blew up in the middle of the Idaho desert,

it killed three young military men, spread radiation over thousands of acres,

and left everyone scrambling for answers.

To this day, it remains America's deadliest nuclear accident.

But rumor has it, there's more to this story.

There was a love trying on this dude killed another guy with a nuclear reactor, basically.

The guy when he left for work, his wife said, I won't be here in the morning because

she was sleeping with the dude he was working with, and he was like, if I can't have her, you can't have her.

But was that scandalous tale just a convenient distraction from a bigger problem?

It's an easier story to understand than what goes on in the middle of a reactor.

Which would we rather believe is unstable? A nuclear reactor? Or the men operating it?

And which actually was?

I don't know if that guy killed his friend or not. To me, it's kind of irrelevant.

Like something was going to blow that reactor up.

Big things come from tiny packages, and for decades, we hope to harness all the power packed inside

the atom for our dreams of a better future. Nuclear medicine might cure terrible diseases.

Nuclear electricity might make electricity too cheap to meter.

But are we actually responsible enough to be messing with the power of the universe?

Are the risks higher than the rewards? And will human error always thwart our best-laid plans?

The SL-1 accident and others that have followed put our atomic aspirations on ice.

But now, 60 years later, they may be making a comeback, and the town closest to the SL-1

disaster is pinning its hopes on a new generation of nuclear reactors. What could go wrong?

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