Ernest Graves
speed, there is a high centrifugal force. Everything has to be anchored in so that you
don't have a problem.
One of the factors in scheduling all this was not only to strip out the old wire and do
the rewinding, but to provide time for curing the epoxy glue that had to be put on to
hold the winding in place. Yes, that was one of their problems.
Q:
What became of the program?
A:
The guy you ought to talk to sometime about that would be [Colonel Robert B.] Bob
Burlin, who headed it for quite a time. And my West Point roommate, Ken Cooper,
who was the last director. Basically, there wasn't an economic justification for these
plants. They went on to the barge-mounted plant, the Sturgis.
Q:
That's right.
A:
They did use that down in Panama when Panama had a water shortage. They didn't
want to draw down Gatun Lake because of the effect on the draft of ships using the
canal. To supplement the power supply while they were building some big steam plants,
they took the Sturgis down there and generated power in Panama.
But the plants were a lot more expensive than conventional plants of the same size.
They were trouble because you had all the business about it being nuclear, and so you
had to make a lot of extra arrangements.
Q:
So opposition was beginning to emerge?
A:
Opposition is too strong a word in this. But if it was nuclear and it was going to
Panama, you had to coordinate with the Panamanian government that it was a nuclear
plant. It had a special identity, and that took extra work.
I think the main thing was economic. They didn't have a plant that was economically
competitive for these remote locations. And the Army spent its money on other things.
Q:
Were you disappointed when the program petered out?
A:
I had come to recognize that they weren't going to make it economically. I had
recognized that some time before. Yes, except that I worked on a lot of different things
that didn't go as far as they might. I am much more disappointed in the overall fate of
nuclear power in the United States than I am in the failure of this program to make a
major contribution. That would be my reaction.
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