Engineer Memoirs
Commission, who was a civilian. But Joe was the Atomic Energy Commission's
resident engineer.
Q:
I see.
A:
Jim Lampert was the chief of the Army Reactors Branch in the Division of Reactor
Development of the Atomic Energy Commission, as Rickover was chief of the Naval
Reactors Branch. These people were all dual hatted. Lampert had a job in the Office of
the Chief of Engineers, and he had a job in the Atomic Energy Commission. His office
was actually located in 1717 H Street, which was the downtown office of the Atomic
Energy Commission, the main office being out at Germantown.
Q:
Were you involved in design and construction of what became the SM1 [stationary,
medium power] reactor, the Army's first nuclear reactor? Is that what they finally--?
A:
I didn't get into that a whole lot. The minute I got on board, I started talking about all
the things that are involved in the operation--but the design had been pretty well
frozen. The contract had been awarded.
I remember talking to them about changing the design of the building. The building is
just a nice little building built around the plant. I said we shouldn't do that. We should
build the building in the form of a cross. Well, we wouldn't build the arms of the cross,
but we would have the ability for the building to grow in four directions.
One direction would be on the side of the spent fuel pit, and we would use that wing
to work on things related to fuel rods and spent fuel. Another direction would be where
the generators were, and we would use that direction to do development work on the
generators and the other conventional power plant features.
Another direction would be where the control room was, and we would use that wing
to work on perfecting the instrumentation. In other words, we would have areas there
where we could do R&D that would relate to the various plant functions.
My general idea was yes, we had this reactor. We were going to run a 700-hour
performance test, and then the thing was going to be turned over to testing. They
wanted to get a lot of hours on these fuel rods, and they wanted to do a lot of
measurements.
In the fourth direction would be chemistry. In any steam plant you have to worry about
the chemical content of the water. Water chemistry was an important aspect--still is in
nuclear plants because the water has to be very pure so that the impurities will not
become radioactive as they circulate.
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