"DoN. Nichols" wrote:
On 2011-03-19, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:
[ ... ]
So *that's* what that area was. I used to work within the
overall compound which enclosed that compound, and we would occasionally
take a picnic lunch down to near there in the early 1990s.
Back in the mid to late 1960s, I remember we would occasionally
have a radiation drill, requiring us to all move cars to a somewhat
distant location (the parking lot of the on-post movie theater IIRC) and
get everybody checked for radiation. They used to shout at people to
close the air intake vent (remember those at the base of the
windshield?) as we drove out of the compound.
None of my cars ever had one, the first being a '63 Catalina
convertible which was followed by a '66 GTO.
I think that you need to go back to the late 1950s to get that
feature.
[ ... ]
There was also another reactor not that far away -- on a ship,
with heavy duty power lines going from there to the shore and joining
the commercial power lines. I thought that was why we had the drills.
I didn't know about the ground-locked one.
It's twin, the SM-1A was across the street from my barracks at Ft
Greely, AK. It was decommisioned and encapsuled in concrete, on site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program has a photo
about half way down, on the right side of the page.
Yep! and the SM-1 was certainly the first which I had wondered
about. (I mean a security compound within a security compound after all. :-)
The other I mentioned turns out to be the MH-1A -- also shown in
the collection of photos on that Wikipedia site. I -- never knew its
designation either. And it appears to still be functional.
With two reactors, no wonder we had those radiation drills. The
never told us why (of course), just to do it.
Two reactors, no waiting! Getchur mushrooms today! ;-)
Their existance was likely 'Need to know' in most places. Otherwise
you would have had too many idiots wanting the nickle tour of a
restricted facility. There was a building near one base I served at
that had no windows, and two fences around it. It was about two miles
from the main base on a military reserve and bristled with antennas. I
casually mentioned it one day and almost got arrested for simply stating
that they had more antennas than the Radio & TV station I was assigned
to.
--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.