ABSTRACT
The BWR nuclear plant, like the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), has its origins in the technology developed in the 1950s for the United States Navy nuclear submarine program. The first BWR nuclear plant to be built was the 5 MWe Vallecitos Plant (1957) near San Jose, California. The Vallecitos plant confirmed that BWR plants could successfully and safely produce electricity for a grid. The first large-scale BWR, Dresden I, followed in 1960, and since then the BWR design subsequently underwent a series of evolutionary changes with one purpose in mind: simplicity.
