Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

Other opportunistic uses of the facility occurred thereafter. In 1980, fuel rod pellets were subjected to
various kinds of charges, including a shaped charge, in the water storage tank at the facility. In 1974 four
containers of contaminated NaK, previously stored at EBR-I, were moved to the bunker for safekeeping
and isolation.
The ARVFS bunker site was decontaminated and dismantled in 1997. As mitigation for this
potentially historic property, the Department of Energy contracted for a Historic American Engineering
Record report on the facility. 187
The ARVFS facility, which was of such short-term usefulness that neither electricity nor telephone
were extended to the site, was a small part of the Arms Race. It represents one of a nearly infinite list of
details executed to guarantee a weapon that would do the destructive work for which it had been
designed.
Sub-Theme: Cold War Weapons and Military Applications
Test Area North
Beginnings of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program: 1951. The idea for a nuclear-powered
aircraft was envisioned before the end of World War II. Military advocates fought to have the idea given
serious attention in the years after the war. The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program — as it would
involve the NRTS — began in 1951 when the Department of Defense decided that a nuclear-powered
bomber was a military requirement. The concept for the weapon system was that a bomber would be able
to remain aloft for at least five days, approach its target from any circuitous route, deliver the payload,
evade enemy fire, and return home by any route desired.
When the AEC and the U.S. Air Force undertook the ANP program, they assigned the General
Electric Company (GE) the task of developing a “direct cycle” heat exchange system for a turbojet
aircraft. The NRTS opened up for GE a new site at the far northeastern end of the site—Test Area North,
or TAN. TAN is about twenty-seven miles from CFA. 188
The Utah Construction Company broke ground for the first buildings at TAN in 1953. They were
equipped and ready for serious experiments by Christmas of 1955. GE's objective was to set up a turbojet
engine, connect it to a reactor, and prove that the heat from the reactor could propel the engine.
Major Facilities of the ANP Program. The project would require many support buildings in discrete
activity areas. One of the first large buildings completed was the Assembly and Maintenance (A&M)
building (TAN-607). A sprawling one-story structure, it would be the place to construct, assemble, repair,
and modify the experiment. The A&M building contained a variety of fabrication shops and laboratories.
The metallurgical lab contained X-ray machines for inspecting welds; the radioactive materials lab would
examine spent fuel elements from the reactor and other radioactive samples. A Hot Shop, 52 ft wide by
160 ft long by 60 ft high, with its six-foot-thick shielded windows and master-slave manipulators, allowed
for the remote handling of “industrial-scale work” and radioactive substances. A chemical lab handled
other chemicals, and a photographic lab was available. “Cold” shops were equipped to repair jet engines,
make and calibrate instrumentation, and assemble (prior to their initial test) the nuclear power plants that
would be the subject of the experiments. This building was separated from administrative and other
non-research functions by a 15-foot-high earth embankment located atop a natural ridge formation. 189
187. Susan M. Stacy, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, HAER ID-32-B, Advanced Reentry Vehicle Fuzing System (Idaho Falls:
INEL Report INEL-97-00066, 1997.) The summary of ARVFS activities in this section are drawn from this HAER.
188. Stacy, Proving the Principle, p. 118-120.
189. APEX-15, ANPP Engineering Program Progress Report No. 15, March 1955 (Cincinnati, Ohio: GE ANPP Department, Atomic
Products Division), p. 10; see also Thumbnail Sketch March 1959, p. 13.
244