The US Army Nuclear Power Program was a program to develop small PWR and BWR nuclear power reactors for use in remote sites.
Eight reactors were built in all:
- SM-1, 2MWe. Fort Belvoir, VA, first criticality 1957 (several months before the Shippingport reactor) and the first nuclear power plant to be connected to an electrical grid.
- SM-1A, 2MWe plus 38,000 lb/hr of heating. Fort Greely, Alaska. First criticality 1962.
- PM-2A, 2MWe plus 107 Btu/hr of heating. Camp Century, Greenland. First criticality 1961.
- PM-1, 1.25MWe plus 7 x 106 Btu/hr heat. Sundance, Wyoming. Owned by the Air Force, used to power a radar station. First criticality 1962.
- PM-3A, 1.75MWe plus 3 x 106 Btu/hr heat. McCurdo Sound, Antarctica. Owned by the Navy. First criticality 1962.
- MH-1A, 10MWe plus fresh water supply to the adjacent base. Mounted on the Stirgis, a barge converted from a Liberty ship, and moored from 1968 to 1975 in the Panama Canal Zone.
- SL-1, BWR. Idaho Reactor Testing Station. Site of the only fatal accident at a US nuclear power reactor, on January 3 1961.
- ML-1, first closed cycle gas turbine. Designed for 300 kw, but only achieved 140 kw. Operated for only a few hundred hours of testing before being shut down in 1963.
Key to the codes:
- First letter: S - stationary, M - mobile, P - portable.
- Second letter: H - high power, M - medium power, L - low power.
- Digit: Sequence number.
- Third letter: A indicates field installation.