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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
SM-1 (Stationary, Medium-size reactor, prototype #1) was a 2-megawatt nuclear reactor developed by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) in the mid-1950s. The compact "package" reactor was designed to produce electricity and generate heat for remote military facilities. The first, the SM-1, served as the Army's primary training facility to train reactor operations personnel from all three services (Army, Navy and Air Force). In 1954, the Department of Defense placed the US Army in charge of all military nuclear power plants except those used for propulsion by the US Navy. The Army's Chief of Engineers established the US Army Engineer Reactors Group in April 1954, and decided to construct the SM-1 facility at the Corps of Engineers headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 18 miles (29 km) south of Washington, D.C. About 800 personnel were trained on the SM-1 during its operational life, from 1957 to 1973. The power plant was shut down in March 1973, and is monitored within a "restricted access" section of the post. Inspectors enter the shut-down operations control room every decade or so.[1] USACE has started dismantling the SM-1 facility, and estimate completion by 2026.[2][3]
Research and development of the reactor design was conducted in 1952–54 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, under the guidance of the Package Power Group. Funding for the reactor was approved in 1954 and bids to construct the facility were received from 18 companies, ranging in price from $2 million to $7 million.[4] According to Time magazine of 18 July 1955, the Army selected the low bid ($2,096,753), submitted by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO Products) of Schenectady, New York, and awarded the contract in December 1954.[5]
The name "SM-1" stands for Stationary, Medium-size reactor, prototype #1. The pressurized-water reactor (PWR) design developed by the AEC was a heterogeneous, water-cooled and water-moderated, stainless steel system, using highly enriched (93%) uranium dioxide mixture as fuel.[6]
The term "package" in the name Army Package Power Reactor refers to the program objective of designing a compact nuclear power plant whose components could be packed for delivery to remote facilities aboard large military transport aircraft. The SM-1 served as the prototype for the SM-1A power plant, which was constructed at Fort Greely, Alaska, between 1960 and 1962. The reactor core itself was compact, about the size of a household dishwasher.[7]
At a press conference held on 19 August 1954, (then) Major General Sturgis, Chief of Engineers, announced the plan by the Army and the AEC to build the "package" power plant at Fort Belvoir. A location in a "closed area" of the garrison had been selected, near a point at which Accotink Bay (aka, Gunston Cove) joins the Potomac River. The general said the design of the package reactor resembles the nuclear power plant on the US Navy's (newly launched) nuclear submarine Nautilus. He also said the reactor could be housed in a building 29 feet (8.8 m) wide, 42 feet (13 m) high and 80 feet (24 m) long. The Army was sending out a request for proposals, that day, to "33 qualified bidders", and companies were being asked to come up with a "competitive lump-sum bid", rather than a cost-plus estimate.[8] On 14 December 1954, the AEC announced that the contract was being given to American Locomotive Company of New York, whose $2 million bid was the lowest of the 18 proposals received.[9] Asking companies to submit a lump-sum bid was hailed, at that time, as a sign of how much progress had been made in reactor power plant design by mid-1954, such that companies now had sufficient experience and could calculate costs with confidence.
Construction of the building to house the reactor began on 5 October 1955 in the southeast "corner" of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, alongside Gunston Cove, off the Potomac River. According to a news note in the December 1955 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "Construction of the 'package' or portable reactor has been started at Fort Belvoir, VA. Alco Products is the contractor for the Defense Department and the AEC. The reactor will generate about 2,000 kilowatts of electricity, enough for a community of about 5,000 people."[10] ALCO Products supplied the reactor, pressurizer and steam generator, while Westinghouse Electric Corporation supplied the canned-rotor pumps, General Electric supplied the turbine and generator, the Lummus Company supplied the condenser, and Minneapolis-Honeywell installed the controls. By late October 1955, the Army pushed ALCO to accelerate construction towards a completion date of 10 July 1957.[11] As a result, all major work was completed by March 1957.
Construction was completed in 18 months, the SM-1 reactor achieved first criticality on 8 April 1957, and the plant was formally opened in a public ceremony on 29 April 1957. Designed as a small-scale, pressurized-water, commercial nuclear power plant the power output from the SM-1 was connected to the local electrical grid. Thus, the SM-1 and Fort Belvoir hold the distinction of delivering the first nuclear generated electricity for public use in America, coming online several months before the (much larger, $55 million) Shippingport Reactor (in December 1957.)[12]
According to a June 1957 report in the industry magazine POWER, "Normal operation (of the SM-1) will need a total of 29 men. Operators will be high-school graduates with 1-year training, led by engineers."[13] The location of the Army's nuclear reactor training facility alongside Gunston Cove explains why the floating MH-1A came to be tested at Fort Belvoir in April 1966.
The successful operation of the SM-1 was promoted by the Department of Defense as a demonstration of President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. Shortly after it was placed in operation in 1957, the Pentagon invited a group of foreign defense military attaches stationed in Washington D.C. to tour the Fort Belvoir facility. A 30-second news video of that 1957 visit shows military officers from Cuba, Costa Rica and Portugal, amongst the group invited inside the reactor control room.
Plans to decommission the SM-1 reactor were announced in June 1972, and the reactor was shut down for the last time on 16 March 1973: four members of the first group of operators trained in 1957 participated in the shutdown ceremony.[14] According to a 1998 US Army report on the Army Reactor Program, during its 16 years of operations the facility trained some 800 nuclear operations specialists.[15] During its operational life, the SM-1 reactor had its core replaced twice. According to a January 2001 report compiled by the Department of Energy, the total amount of uranium-235 supplied for the SM-1's three cores was 72.7 kilograms: the U-235 was enriched to 93 percent. The spent fuel from the first core was sent to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (the INEEL, originally known as the Idaho National Reactor Testing Station) and the fuel from the SM-1's second and third cores was sent to the Savannah River Site.[16]
In April 1975, the reactor building was reopened to the public as a museum until the mid-1980s when it was again closed to the public.[14]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) was a program of the United States Army to develop small nuclear reactors to generate electrical and space-heating energy primarily at remote, relatively inaccessible sites. The ANPP tried both pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors, and had several accomplishments, but ultimately it was considered to be "a solution in search of a problem." The U.S. Army Engineer Reactors Group managed this program and it was headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The program began in 1954 as the Army Reactors Branch and had effectively terminated by about 1977, with the last class of NPP operators graduating in 1977. Work continued for some time thereafter either for decommissioning of the plants or placing them into SAFSTOR (long term storage and monitoring before decommissioning). The current development of small modular reactors has led to a renewed interest in military applications, e.g. in Project Pele.
ML-1 was an experimental nuclear reactor built as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program between 1961 and 1965. It was intended to provide truck-mounted nuclear power that could accompany troops from place to place and provide power to command and communication centers, evacuation hospitals, depots, and radar and weapons systems. Unlike the other seven reactors of this program, it did not use a steam turbine, but instead used a nitrogen coolant at 315 pounds per square inch (2,170 kPa) to drive a closed-cycle gas turbine. It was designed to produce 3.3 MWthermal of heat and 400 kW of shaft horsepower with an outlet temperature of 1,200 °F (649 °C). Though the concept of a nitrogen closed cycle gas turbine was strong, the design failed to live up to expectations, and was abandoned with the closure of ML-1 in 1965 after several major refits and with only a few hundred hours of testing completed in all. Similar concepts have been more recently proposed as part of the PBMR program as derivatives thereof. A 1964 economic analysis concluded that the overall cost of purchasing and operating the ML-1 for a period of 10 years would be about ten times that of a comparable diesel plant at normal fuel costs.
MH-1A was the first floating nuclear power station. Named Sturgis after General Samuel D. Sturgis III, this pressurized water reactor built in a converted Liberty ship was part of a series of reactors in the US Army Nuclear Power Program, which aimed to develop small nuclear reactors to generate electrical and space-heating energy primarily at remote, relatively inaccessible sites. Its designation stood for mobile, high power. After its first criticality in 1967, MH-1A was towed to the Panama Canal Zone that it supplied with 10 MW of electricity. Its dismantling began in 2014 and was completed in March 2019.
SM-1 (Stationary, Medium-size reactor, prototype #1) was a 2-megawatt nuclear reactor developed by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) in the mid-1950s. The compact "package" reactor was designed to produce electricity and generate heat for remote military facilities. The first, the SM-1, served as the Army's primary training facility to train reactor operations personnel from all three services (Army, Navy and Air Force). In 1954, the Department of Defense placed the US Army in charge of all military nuclear power plants except those used for propulsion by the US Navy. The Army's Chief of Engineers established the US Army Engineer Reactors Group in April 1954, and decided to construct the SM-1 facility at the Corps of Engineers headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 18 miles (29 km) south of Washington, D.C. About 800 personnel were trained on the SM-1 during its operational life, from 1957 to 1973. The power plant was shut down in March 1973, and is monitored within a "restricted access" section of the post. Inspectors enter the shut-down operations control room every decade or so. USACE has started dismantling the SM-1 facility, and estimate completion by 2026.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
