Fort Greely

Critical Cleanup Target

Fort Greely is a 640,000 acre Army base located approximately 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Until scheduled for closure under the Base Realignment and Closure Act, Fort Greely served as the command center for the U.S. Army Cold Regions Test Center. The Army used it as a center for the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and Special Projects Division beginning in 1966. The Army and Air Force used areas within Fort Greely and the nearby Gerstle River Test site for testing of high explosives munitions, chemical, and biological weapons. Some of these test areas are so badly damaged and dangerous that the military advises "against restoration and demilitarization."

The SM-1A experimental nuclear reactor, built by the Army at Fort Greely in 1962. According to the Army, the site was chosen because it did not have any major population centers within a fifty mile radius. "The four hundred residents of the adjacent community of Delta were apparently expendable, as were the additional one hundred who lived within the fifty-mile radius (William R. Johnson, Masters Thesis, "Testing Nuclear Power in Alaska: the Reactor at Fort Greely," University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1993)."

The Army used Jarvis Creek, a glacier-fed creek located about 1 mile from the reactor, as a nuclear waste dump. For example, the Army discharged 5,250 gallons of radioactive liquid waste into the creek at radiation levels exceeding 500,000 times the permitted limits in February of 1970. Between 1962 and 1970, the Army made at least 14 discharges of radioactive waste into Jarvis Creek, the largest one of 17,960 gallons. When the underground pipeline to Jarvis Creek froze and ruptured during winter months, liquid radioactive waste discharged into the ground. Radioactive waste was also disposed into the groundwater. In the photo, physicist Norm Buske is using a detector to measure radiation along the creek as part of an ACAT field investigation in August of 1998. ACAT will release a report in early 1999 to detail the findings of our investigation and review of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Designed to produce 1.5 megawatts of electricity and 45 million BTUs of heating steam per hour, the Army's SM-(stationary, "medium" power) 1A nuclear reactor operated from 1962-1971. When the reactor was decommissioned, approximately 48,304 curies of radiation were left encased within the reactor. Although the Army said that the entombment structure was designed to last for 150 years, major structural damage had already developed by 1990 in the form of a 3.14 inch crack along the south side of an inner wall and numerous cracks along the east wall.