Transcript of Listen Now - REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana

Hey, 92%ers. My name is Luke Lmana, and the Kelsies have graciously let me come on here to tell you about my new podcast. It's called Redacted: Declassified mysteries. Every week on Redacted, we dive deep into astonishing true stories of secrets, lies, and deception inside the world's most powerful institutions. While your mind may go to conspiracy theories like Deflategate and the Tuck Rule game, Redacted focuses on real documented cases that have buried in classified files for decades. Combining my passion for storytelling and my experiences working in military intelligence, I pull back the curtain on covert government experiments, bizarre assassination attempts, and so much more. It's the stuff that makes you go, How have I not heard about this before? I'm about to play you a clip from redacted Declassified mysteries with me, Luke LaMana. But while you're listening, be sure to follow the show on the WNDRI app or wherever you get your podcasts.

At 10:35 PM on January 3, 1961, a physicist named Ed Valario pulled up to a secret nuclear test site in the Idaho desert. Ed had received an emergency call about an explosion at the nuclear reactor known as SL1. No one had been able to contact the three men who were working that night. Valario waved at his partner who was waiting for him in front of the reactor building. The two men grabbed their gas masks and rushed inside. They hurried up three flights of winding stairs that led toward the reactor's control room, passed pipes and motors and sensors towards the cramp nerve center that controlled the reactor. The building was completely silent, save for the frantic static from their Geiger counters. Valario glanced down and saw the needle pointing to maximum radiation levels. He'd never seen levels that high before. When Valario opened the control room door, his heart skipped a beat. The scene inside was total devastation. Twisted metal scattered across the floor, clouds of steam hovering above the shattered control board, pools of blood and water everywhere. Two bodies lay on the floor, bodies so badly mutilated, it was impossible to tell who they were.

But where, he wondered, was the third man. Then something above him caught his attention, something on the ceiling, something that would haunt him for the rest of his life. From Balin Studios and WNDRI, I'm Luke LaMana, and this is redacted Declassified mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide. This week's episode is called The Forgotten Meldow. It was the dawn of the atomic age, a time in America marked by an obsession with nuclear power. It could be used to create weapons of mass destruction, but could also be used to create an endless supply of energy that was practically free. This miracle source could be used to power cities and less independence on foreign oil. In short, it could change the way the world was run. By the 1960s, nuclear power plants were springing up all over the country, providing thousands of jobs and lighting millions of homes. But in the headlong rush into the nuclear future, people seemed to forget about the first nuclear disaster that happened on American soil in 1961. Most people have heard of the accidents at Chernoble and Fukushima, so why not SL1?

Maybe because the reasons for the explosion remain cloaked in mystery and misinformation to this day. Was it negligence, a fatal design flaw, or was it something darker, like a crime of passion or a murder-suicide? What is the truth behind the Idaho Falls nuclear disaster, and how different might things be for all of us had that truth really come out? It was late October 1959 in Idaho Falls, 20-year-old US Army Specialist Jack Burns sprinted out his front door and down the street. Although the Army had done its best to make him punctual, Jack still tended to be late. And today was no different. It was his first day as a nuclear reactor operator at the US Army's National Reactor Testing Station, and he was about to miss his bus. He reached the corner just as the bus rolled to a stop. Jack leapt aboard and dropped a few coins in the till. He moved toward the back but stopped when he saw one of the other passengers. He knew him. His name was Richard Legg, and they had gone through the same nuclear training program in Virginia. Jack didn't know Richard well, but he'd seen him around.

So he sat in the seat across the aisle and asked if this was his first day, The National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls was created by the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1949. It was a top secret site built out in the desert, miles away from any town. As Jack and Richard made small talk, Jack unpacked the lunch his wife Arlene had made him. She'd cut the crust off his sandwich just the way he liked it. He and Arlene had only been married a couple of years, and he liked when she did these sorts of newlywed things for him. Jack was a man of action. He hadn't He didn't want to wait until he was old enough to join the army, so he fudged his birth records and enlisted when he was 17. The same went for starting a family. He got married by the time he was 19, and he and Arlene had already had a baby boy named Jacky. Jack hoped working at the testing station would lead to a better, higher paying job down the line, a bigger house and a better life for his wife and son. But besides the money, there was something exciting about working with nuclear energy.

He felt like he was part of something bigger than himself. The bus was now moving through the Lost River Desert, a barren landscape of scorched earth, sagebrush, and black lava beds. It was boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter. Eventually, the bus came to a stop. Jack and Richard got off and walked toward the chain link fence that surrounded the testing station. Jack felt a wave of disappointment. The main building looked like an old barn, and the two dozen reactors around it looked like grain silos. Silos. He'd hoped the campus would look futuristic, shiny and metal like something out of Flash Gordon. But this looked like the set of an old Western. Jack took a tour of the campus and saw the reactor where he would be working. It was called SL1, a three-story, 39-foot-wide metal silo with a set of winding stairs that led to a control room. Jack squinted at the reactor. It wasn't impressive to look at, but maybe it would be more exciting once he understood more how it worked. After all, he had already moved his wife and kid to the desert. He had to make the most of it.

You can listen to redacted Declassified mysteries with me, Luke LaMana, early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI+ in the WNDRI app or Apple podcasts.