HUFFPOST
RINCÓN, Puerto Rico — At the end of a dirt road leading to a prime surfing spot in this vacation town on the northwest coast sits a giant, hemispheric bulb bulging out from between the palm trees. When the structure popped up more than six decades ago, federal scientists called it the “dome of the future.”
Beneath its rounded concrete exterior lie the remains of the only nuclear power reactor ever built in the Caribbean — an early experimental model the U.S. government started testing in 1960 to see if superheating steam to higher temperatures could unlock ways to make atomic energy cheaper.
Due to technical challenges and high maintenance costs, Puerto Rico’s state-owned utility ended operations at the nuclear plant in 1968. The site eventually became a museum open to the public — until Hurricane María, the Category 5 storm that pulverized the…