Ernest Graves
The basic problem was they couldn't come up with a design that didn't require all these
people to be around to fix it.
Q:
What was this company named ALCO that--
A:
Yes. The American Locomotive Company.
Q:
Is that a subsidiary of General Electric?
A:
No. It was up there in Schenectady, but it was completely separate--it was the second
locomotive company. Of course, if you go back, you had Baldwin and others that made
steam locomotives. The American Locomotive Company made steam locomotives.
With the transition to diesel, you ended up with really only two companies: General
Motors and ALCO. ALCO was the second one. They were still making diesel
locomotives in the mid-1950s, but when the nuclear business got going, because of their
background in making steam locomotives, they got involved in pressure vessels and
other things of this type--pumps and so forth--related to nuclear power plants. They
had been working as one of the subcontractors in Rickover's program.
Based on their considerable experience in that aspect of nuclear power, they were
invited to bid on the prototype Army package power reactor. American Locomotive
Company became one of the finalists in the competition.
They were trying to move from the subcontractor tier, making pressure vessels, et
cetera, into the position of being a prime. So they bought in. The estimate for this plant
was million, and they bid million.
Q:
It was a fixed-price contract?
A:
It was a fixed-price contract to build the plant and to test it. Nobody made any bones
about it--ALCO was going to put up million to establish its position. There have
been complaints in some of these cases where buying in was viewed as a negative. But
the attitude here was not that. If industry at this early stage was willing to put up part
of the money this way, that was fine. The contract was between the Atomic Energy
Commission's Schenectady office and ALCO.
Q:
So there was not an engineer contracting officer on it?
A:
All the engineers were detailed to the Atomic Energy Commission. For example, Joe
Bacci was the contracting officer's representative. His superior in the contracting
hierarchy was the manager of Schenectady operations of the Atomic Energy
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