On April 19, 1961, the American flag was raised near Sundance at a site that was to become the home of the 731st Radar Squadron of the United States Air Force. For the next seven years, the Sundance Air Force Station would play a dramatic role in the life of this small community while being part of the huge North American Air Defense Command`s Aerospace Surveillance system. The Air Force has no official history of its bases. The best available information about this particular military installation can be found at the Crook County Museum in four books of collected newspaper clippings covering the entire history. To best understand "the base", as it is still referred to in Sundance, it is useful to think of it as two separate facilities. As a radar base, it was one of 143 such installations built across the northern part of the United States. As a nuclear powered Air Force station, it was unique: the Navy had a reactor at the McMurdo Sound Naval Air Facility in Antarctica, the Army had one in Greenland, and the Air Force had one in Sundance.
The reactor began to produce electricity on November 1, 1962, and on January 23, 1964 it produced its five millionth kilowatt-hour. From the news clippings, it appears that the three branches of the service were competitive about their nuclear reactors. The Navy had operated its reactor continuously for 1138 hours; the Army for 2508 hours. The Air Force had news releases when the Sundance reactor exceeded the Navy record on February 5, 1964. Very soon after beating the Army record on April 3, 1964, the Air Force shut the reactor down for inspection and maintenance.
When the reactor was cooled off and disassembled, the Air Force found more corrosion on the control rod thimbles than it had expected. They predicted that it would be mid September before they had it running again. This information was very matter-of-factly reported in the Sundance Times; from reading the old clippings, a reader today would never know if anyone was alarmed at corrosion on the control rods!
The Sundance radar site was chosen for being powered by the nuclear reactor because of its isolation and its weather extremes. The military wanted to know if nuclear power would be a practical option for installations in extreme locations. Many military requirements made standard methods of power supply impractical.
The issue of the danger of radiation exposure was a major concern to the service. (Please see related story about Warren Glick and the PM-1.) Special clothing was worn by personnel working near the reactor; when they were finished with a shift, the clothing was placed in waste disposal. In charge of the Preventative Medicine department, one sergeant`s full-time job was to monitor the health of the workers and to monitor the effects of the reactor on the environment. Quarterly, he collected and analyzed soil samples taken from 37 sampling points within a 50 mile radius of the station. After every rain or snow fall, he collected samples at four places located five miles in each direction of the reactor.
The Air Force was concerned about unauthorized persons gaining access to the facility. All airmen were instructed to be suspicious of anyone on the premises they didn`t personally know. They also held periodic drills in which a mock unauthorized entry would be made. In these "Penetrator drills," the security teams would see how quickly they could find and apprehend the intruder.
Once the airmen were here, they added a lot to the social life of the town. They formed the Sundance Rod and Gun Club. They were active in city bowling leagues. They played bridge in the "Base and Town Bridge Club." (The B & T Bridge Club is still playing cards today.)
Every spring the town and base together celebrated armed forces day. There was a parade through Sundance and an armed forces day queen was selected. In 1964, the queen was Mrs. Cleo Roberts, and the winner of the "bearded beauty contest" that year was Duane Hartl. Each month the base commander chose an "Airman of the Month" and this man was the recipient of numerous gift certificates from the businesses in town.
Reading the old accounts, I was struck with a nostalgia for simpler times, more trusting times, less cynical times. Again and again in the clippings someone is named for contributing to some church choir, or for taking or teaching some class, or for coming up with some ingenious idea that saved the American taxpayers some few dollars and cents. There was a clipping about the library on the base getting new carpeting, and it cost the government only $200.
My favorite: a certificate given to the many citizens who toured the facility. At the top was a drawing of a radar atop a snowcovered mountain with a nuclear halo. It said: "Be it known that John Doe, having braved the dangers of winding mountain roads, wandering deer, and porcupine, has been admitted to the mysterious interior of the PM-1 Nuclear Power Plant, having therein been exposed to neurotic neutrons, galloping gamma rays and scrutinous shift supervisors; has been given a glimpse of the nasty tank and has been bathed in the blue light from the reactor core and shall henceforth and always belong to the Order of the Nervous Neutron."
This certificate bore the signature of the commanding officer of the 731st Radar Squadron, Sundance, Wyoming.
WARREN GLICK, MASTER SERGEANT, MECHANIC IN THE PM-1
There were three specialities of airmen who worked directly with the
reactor. The Health Physicists were responsible for making sure the working
conditions around the nuclear plant were safe. They established health
protocol and maintained the health records of the men. The Electricians
maintained everything electrical from the reactor to the turbine-driven
generator. The Mechanics were responsible for everything that wasn`t
electrical, which usually involved repairing leaks in the steam system.
Warren Glick was a mechanic with the rank of Master Sergeant. He also was
shift supervisor. He and his fellow mechanics kept the steam flowing and the
generator turning. Whatever broke, wore out, or malfunctioned, whether in
the reactor itself, in the steam piping and valves, or in the turbine and
generator, Glick figured out how to fix it.
Glick came to the Sundance Air Station in October of 1964, not long after the Air Force had PM-1 running again after being shut down for repairs after beating the Army record for continuous operation. This time, the goal was to beat the continuous operation record set by a nonmilitary power plant and it would be a much longer run. The mechanics were constantly improvising to find ways to repair problems without shutting the system down.
Glick remembers one time that a high-pressure steam pipe developed a leak. This pipe was the main pipe carrying the steam from the heat exchanger to the turbine; it could not be depressurized and cooled without shutting everything down. With the small hole spewing forth steam under high pressure, Glick could not merely weld the hole, as he would have if the pipe had not been in service. He solved the problem by welding a short length of pipe around the hole, then placing a valve on the end of the newly attached pipe, then closing the valve. To this day (and it has been more than thirty years since the reactor was making steam) when Glick talks about his work at the air base his pleasure in the work he did shows. He speaks very highly of the officers he reported to and he conveys the sense that he was part of a team that took enormous pride in beating a record and doing it safely. The airmen were working with new technology and the military took precautions for the safety of the workers. It was known that exposure to radiation created serious health problems, so four methods of monitoring exposure were used. Every airman carried a dosimeter for his shift around the PM-1. When he checked in for his shift, he would pick up one of these measuring instruments and carry it with him for the day. At the end of the shift, the dosimeter would tell him how much radiation he had been exposed to for that day. Any time an airman had worked in the area containing the reactor, he would immediately upon leaving the area check himself thoroughly with a Geiger counter to detect immediate levels of radiation. To monitor for longer term exposure, each airman wore a radiation-sensitive badge that would be processed once a month. To complete the safety protocol, once every year, everyone who worked around the reactor would be flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and have his body tested for radioactivity. Glick does not remember anyone ever being removed permanently from working with PM-1, although sometimes an individual might receive too much radiation over a short period of time. That individual would then be reassigned briefly to duties that would keep him away from the reactor.
HAROLD SKEESICK, DIESEL MECHANIC
Harold Skeesick worked as a civilian for the Air Force, in charge of the
Diesel generators. For more than a year, he had to commute to the base from
Spearfish. The sudden influx of Air Force men and their families had made
housing unavailable in Sundance. He remembers a town nervous about having a
large government presence move in. He says the older generation that was
running things in town really wanted nothing to do with Air Force offers to
help build things like schools and water systems, because they most
assuredly did not want the government to control any of the city`s
infrastructure.
Skeesick explained the purpose of the Diesel generators. Four 1932 Fairbanks-Morse generators, each with a 300 kilowatt capacity, were set up to provide electricity to the three radars whenever the nuclear plant was not on line. As Skeesick recalls, because the nuclear plant was an experiment, the Diesel plant was running about 95% of the time for about the first five years. He recalls times when the operator of the reactor would call on the intercom and have Skeesick stand by to disconnect the Diesel plant as the nuclear plant would try to pick up the electrical load. Skeesick said sometimes everything went just fine; other times, the whole place went dark.
Skeesick recalls the night of a terrible blizzard when the Air Force called him because the radar site had gone dead. He made his way through the storm to the radar site and soon found the problem. The GATR site, the small installation of electronic equipment that communicated with the military air traffic, was located about a mile from the radar site. It received the electricity it needed either from the Diesel generators at the radar site or from PM-1, via overhead lines. The wind was so fierce that night that it was slapping the two wires together, blowing out the fuses. Skeesick and his crew fought the blizzard to get to the GATR site to start the emergency generator that was there for occasions just like this. Unfortunately, no one had thought to provide shelter for this generator. It would not start. It was a long night!
These generators were old and quite worn before the Air Force ever began to use them, so a team of maintenance experts from the Fairbanks-Morse company was brought in to teach the youngsters in Wyoming how to keep these ancient behemoths running. Skeesick to this day is impressed with one old man named Peterson. Peterson walked into the building that housed the four machines, all running. He stood and listened for a while and then told Skeesick which cylinder in which engine needed to have its fuel injector adjusted. While Skeesick and his crew of three other civilians and a supporting crew of enlisted men kept the power flowing with their antique generators, the military kept working with the PM-1. The day came when everything was just right, and the Fairbanks-Morse machines took their retirement. But to the end, they were well maintained and ready. Skeesick and his men and his machines made sure the radars would always have a supply of power.
By Ernie Reinhold, staff reporter and writer, The Sundance Times, Sundance, Wyoming 82729