Page 2/3 - Posted June 25, 2010 A unique experiment A nuclear
power plant in the Antarctic was one of the unique experiments
of the Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP), which involved all of
the military branches, to develop small, pressurized water and
boiling water nuclear power reactors, primarily at remote,
relatively inaccessible sites. In total, eight reactors or
plants were built between 1957 and 1967 The military acronym
“PM” stood for “portable, medium” output reactor. The number “3”
represented the third such reactor in what had been planned as a
series of small-scale nuclear power plants that the military
could deploy for multiple purposes. The letter “A” indicates a
field installation. The first in the PM series, PM-2A, became
operational in February 1961 at Camp Century, a buried station
150 miles east of Thule, Greenland. The second, PM-1, a sister
plant to the PM-3A in Antarctica, became operational in June
1962 in Sundance, Wyo., at an Air Force radar station. Fegley, a
25-year Navy captain, had