Army Nuclear Power Program
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The Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) was a program of the United States Army to develop small pressurized water and boiling water nuclear power reactors for use in remote sites.
Eight reactors were built in all:
- SM-1, 2 MWe. Fort Belvoir, VA, first criticality 1957 (several months before the Shippingport Reactor) and the first U.S. nuclear power plant to be connected to an electrical grid.
- SM-1A, 2 MWe, plus heating. Fort Greely, Alaska. First criticality 1962.
- PM-2A, 2 MWe, plus heating. Camp Century, Greenland. First criticality 1961.
- PM-1, 1.25 MWe, plus heating. Sundance, Wyoming. Owned by the Air Force, used to power a radar station. First criticality 1962.
- PM-3A, 1.75 MWe, plus heating. McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Owned by the Navy. First criticality 1962, decommissioned 1972.
- MH-1A, 10 MWe, plus fresh water supply to the adjacent base. Mounted on the Sturgis, a barge converted from a Liberty ship, and moored in the Panama Canal Zone. Installed 1968, removed on cessation of US zone ownership in 1975 (the last of the eight to permanently cease operation).
- SL-1, BWR, 200kWe, plus heating. Idaho Reactor Testing Station. First criticality 1958. Site of the only fatal accident at a US nuclear power reactor, on January 3 1961, which destroyed the reactor.
- ML-1, first closed cycle gas turbine. Designed for 300 kW, but only achieved 140 kW. Operated for only a few hundred hours of testing before being shut down in 1963.
Key to the codes:
- First letter: S - stationary, M - mobile, P - portable.
- Second letter: H - high power, M - medium power, L - low power.
- Digit: Sequence number.
- Third letter: A indicates field installation.
Of the eight built in all, six produced operationally useful power for an extended period.
Many of the designs were based on United States Naval reactors, which were proven compact reactor designs.
