A new era for airfreight was ushered in by the Flying Tiger Line on February 5, 1963, with a shipment of the first nuclear fuel ever consigned for transport by a commercial air cargo carrier. The shipment was 30,000 pounds of enriched uranium elements manufactured by General Electric’s Atomic Power Equipment in San Jose, Calif. It was first transported by a Flying Tiger Line Canadair CL-44 from San Francisco to New York and then Alitalia carried it on to Naples for use by the 150,000 kilowatt-electrical Garigliana Nuclear Power Station near Naples, Italy. Arrangements for the shipment were made by Air Land Consolidators after two years of research between the firm’s executive vice-president Jessie Carter and the Atomic Energy Commission. Nine more plane loads of nuclear fuel were scheduled to follow during February and March of that year, for a total of 300,000 pounds and a total value of approximately $14 million dollars.
This was the first overseas shipment of enriched uranium from the United States for a large power reactor and was being supplied in connection with the U.S./Euratom Joint Power Program. The fuel was purchased by Euratom under a long-term purchase contract with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
When fully loaded, the nuclear plant contained more than 51 tons of slightly enriched uranium fuel. The fuel, in the form of uranium oxide pellets, was inserted in zircaloy tubes about one-half inch in diameter and nearly ten feet long. Each element contained 81 fuel rods—or tubes. Eventually it required 208 fuel elements, each weighing nearly 800 pounds, for the boiling water reactor to reach full power.
Prime contractor for the plant was International General Electric Operations, S. A., a subsidiary of General Electric Company. General Electric’s Atomic Power Equipment Department, San Jose, designed the boiling water reactor and other associated nuclear equipment.