Where a crown jewel once stood in NASAs ambitious plans for human space exploration now lies a decontaminated nuclear grave.

Current regulations bar NASA from building or researching fueled nuclear devices. Yet in a bygone era five decades ago, the space agencys future was dependent on one: the Plum Brook Reactor Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.

NASA turned on its first, last and only nuclear fission test reactor in 1961 to research nuclear-powered airplanes, then eventually nuclear-powered space rockets. But the mounting cost of the Vietnam War and waning interest in manned space exploration led President Richard Nixon to mothball the facility in 1973.

This is the only reactor facility that NASA had or has since, said Peter Kolb, an engineer at NASA Glenn Research Center who manages the reactors decommissioning program. When they shut it down, the workers didnt realize that it was going to be shut down for good. They thought, Oh, well be back in a month. But that never happened.

After 25 years of dormancy and an additional 14 years of decommissioning work, however, workers demolished the last-standing structure of the 27-acre research facility (below) on May 31, 2012.

We are expecting to have the license termination from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometime this summer, NASA Glenn spokesperson Sally Harrington wrote in an email to Wired.

Before the facilitys walls came tumbling down, however, NASA granted Wired an exclusive look inside. Take a tour of NASAs historic romp in nuclear research in this gallery.

Images: 1) Kolb stands where an 80-ton lead door once cordoned off a rear entrance to a hot laboratory. A crane would lift irradiated experiments into thick-walled rooms where workers could study them. (Copyright Dave Mosher) 2) NASAs mothballed Plum Brook Nuclear Reactor facility in 1981. (NASA)

Updated: In addition to Plum Brooks nuclear fission reactor, NASA also developed two nuclear fusion devices SUMMA and Bumpy Torus. Both were at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, but the experiments never achieved ignition. A clarification was added to this story on June 21, 2012 at 11 a.m. EDT.

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Tour the Tomb of NASA's First and Last Nuclear Fission Reactor