As a sometimes historian of the U.S. infatuation with nuclear power, military and civilian, I thought I had come across most of the bizarre tales of nuclear things gone wrong: Idaho’s SL1 death machine; the atomic powered bomber to nowhere; the flightless Kiwi at Jackass Flats; Edward Teller’s atomic earth blaster project disingenuously named “Plowshare;” Teller and Freeman Dyson’s project to use nuclear flatulence to propel space capsules; the coal-fired nuclear Zimmer generating project in Ohio; Fort St. Vrain in vain; TMI; V.C. Summer; usw.
Then this week I was gobsmacked by a July 10 article in Australia’s fine newspaper The Sydney Morning News. The headline: “The dirty history of ‘Nukey Poo’, the reactor that soiled the Antarctic.” I had never encountered Nukey Poo (not to be confused with Prince Nanki-Poo of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado).
It is a well-written, impeccably researched article, including reference to a 1978 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article about a small nuclear power project called Operation Deep Freeze the U.S. military built at the McMurdo Base. The technicians at the project gave it the nickname “Nukey Poo.”
Some further consultation with the eminent historian Dr. Google also turned up more information about Nukey Poo, formally designated by the Army as PM-3A (Portable, medium-power, 3rd generation), using 93% enriched uranium fuel. It was an air-cooled, 1.75 MWe pressurized water reactor designed to provide electricity, heat, and desalinated water for the U.S. base that was technically in territory allocated to New Zealand.
Here’s the short version of the tale of Nukey Poo, with the punch line revealed in advance: It didn’t turn out well.
In 1960, the Pentagon saw the need for a way to supplant oil-fired diesel power at McMurdo, which housed 1,000 men. While diesel fuel was cheap in the U.S., around 12 cents/gallon, by the time it got to remote Antarctica, it was costing the government 40 cents/gallon.
The Atomic Energy Commission fortuitously had just produced a study touting the economic advantages of nukes in remote places. The military was convinced, and convinced Congress to appropriate $13 million for reactors at McMurdo and two inland Antarctic bases.
The Pentagon contracted with Martin Marietta for $1.4 million to build the McMurdo nuke (it eventually cost $3 million). The plant was built during the summer of 1961. Construction was unique as cement wouldn’t cure in the frigid ambient temperatures. The four major reactor structures were set in steel tanks embedded local gravel and wrapped in lead. One tank held the reactor, a second held the steam generator, a third, empty shell was to contain thermal expansion, and last was for spent fuel. The primary system building sat atop the buried tanks.
Nukey Poo began producing power in 1962 and was first refueled in 1964. Problems began almost immediately. A hydrogen fire broke out in the tanks in the first year. The reactor was out of service for eight weeks. McMurdo had to be supplied with emergency diesel fuel and unusually thick ice stymied seaborn icebreakers. Fuel flew in by helicopters in 55-gallon drums. The 1978 Bulletin article commented that the “helicopters burned a quantity of aviation fuel almost as great as the quantity of fuel they were carrying.”
A 2018 article in The Conversation summarized the experience with the strange reactor: “A decade later, the optimism around the plant had faded. The 25-man team required to run the plant was expensive, while concerns over possible chloride stress corrosion emerged after the discovery of wet insulation during a routine inspection. Both costs and environmental impacts conspired to close the plant in September 1972.”
But that’s not the end of the story of Nukey Poo. The final challenge was how to decommission the plant. That was complicated by international issues.
As workers began dismantling and decontaminating Nukey Poo, they found dangerous levels of radiation had leaked during the plant’s operation. That led to the possibility of violating the Antarctic Treaty, which forbade disposing of nuclear waste on the frozen continent. The Bulletin noted, “All the soil that had soaked up any radioactivity had to go; the Navy was going to have to dig down 15 meters to get it.” The Morning News reported, “Eventually 12,000 tonnes of irradiated gravel and soil was removed on supply ships to be buried in concrete lined pits in the United States.” That was in 1978.
In 2011, an investigation by News 5 Cleveland, Ohio, found evidence that McMurdo personnel were exposed to long-term radiation in Operation Deep Freeze. Reporter Ron Regan and his team at the ABC affiliate won a 2011 Peabody award for that work.
The Sydney newspaper reported, “In 2017 compensation was paid to some American veterans of the base. A year later, New Zealand officials announced that it was possible that New Zealand staff were also affected and in 2020, the Waitangi Tribunal, a permanent commission in New Zealand to investigate cases against the Crown, launched inquiries. They are not yet complete.”
RIP Nukey Poo.
–Kennedy Maize