Engineer Memoirs
Q:
Well, he must have had things under control if he could play golf everyday.
A:
He was a titular head. Gruenther did all the work. Gruenther was the one who
organized the whole thing. They got Eisenhower to make the contacts. But the brains
behind SHAPE were Gruenther's brains. He was a brilliant guy and he pulled all the
levers to make the thing work.
Nuclear Power Program, 19551957
Q:
Were you happy to get back into nuclear power?
A:
Yes. [Lieutenant General James B.] Jim Lampert, who was in charge of the Army
nuclear power program, was one of my role models for all my life. My immediate boss
was [Colonel Joseph A.] Joe Bacci, who was in charge of the Nuclear Power Branch
in the Engineer Research and Development Laboratories. The purpose of that branch
was to build the nuclear power plant at Belvoir--the APPR [Army package power
reactor].
Q:
Bacci worked at Canaveral District later on? Same guy?
A:
Yes. He was a very experienced construction man, and his main job was the
construction of the nuclear power plant at Belvoir. I was in charge of the training
section. My job involved two things: one was to put together the crew for this plant,
and the whole program for training crews.
Q:
The plant was at Belvoir?
A:
The plant was at Belvoir. It's still down there. You can go down and see it.
Q:
I guess I ought to.
A:
You might be interested. The last I knew, it had been set up as a museum. It's down
behind the labs, on the water at Gunston Cove. It used to be that you did not have to
go through the lab to get to it, but they may have changed the security fence.
One job was to put together the crew. The other job was to put together a graduate
education program.
My idea was to pattern this on the same concept Groves used--to have a combined
program: civil engineering and nuclear engineering. I went to all the universities with
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