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  • June

    Sectioned pieces of steel from the STURGIS vessel are seen stacked and prepared for recycling February 26, 2019 during the vessel’s shipbreaking in Brownsville, Texas. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District managed the final decommissioning and dismantling of the STURGIS, the Army’s former floating nuclear power plant, and in addition to safely removing more than 1.5 million pounds of radioactive material the project team was able to recycle approximately 600,000 pounds of lead and more than 5,000 tons of steel and other assorted recyclables.

    Recycling a key factor in dismantling of STURGIS floating nuclear power plant

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently completed the safe removal of more than 1.5 million pounds

  • September

    Retired Lt. Gen. Ernest Graves, a pioneer in the history of the military’s use of nuclear power for various purposes, discusses his past involvement with the construction and initial operation of the SM-1 nuclear reactor and plant at Fort Belvoir in the 1950s with Brian Hearty, the national program manager at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Headquarters, for the Army’s Deactivated Nuclear Power Plant Program, during a meeting at the US Army Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Agency headquarters on Fort Belvoir, Tuesday September 19, 2017. In addition to providing nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction expertise, USANCA is home to the Army Reactor Office, which issues the permits for the Army’s one operating and three deactivated nuclear reactors. Hearty is part of a team gathering as much information as possible about the SM-1 reactor as part of the planning process for its ultimate decommissioning and dismantling. Meeting with Graves is just one of many efforts towards planning SM-1’s decommissioning.

    Pioneer in military use of nuclear power provides insight on facility to be decommissioned

    Retired Lt. Gen. Ernest Graves was just a major when he was assigned to the SM-1, the first-of-its-kind nuclear power plant that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was building on Fort Belvoir in the late 1950s. At the time, Major Graves was tasked with overseeing the final stages of construction, then operating and training the staff for the reactor. The SM-1 was the first nuclear reactor in the country to generate power connected to the commercial grid when it achieved its first criticality in April 1957. Sixty years later, a 93-year-old Graves and his wife, Nancy, visited the facility to discuss its history with professionals from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other Department of Defense agencies charged with handling nuclear-related missions for the military.