The Baltimore District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently announced it has finished decommissioning and tearing down the 1950s era nuclear power reactor at Fort Belvoir, Va.
In a Sept. 10 news release, the Corps said it has finished dismantling the SM-1 Former Nuclear Power Plant, near the Potomac River, about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C.
In addition to being the Army’s first power reactor, it was also the first nuclear unit to provide electricity to the commercial power grid over a prolonged period, the Corps said in the press release.
SMI-1 went online in 1957 as part of the Army’s Nuclear Power Program and it operated until 1973. The environmental cleanup work has been planned since 2014, the Army Corps said in the news release. The Corps obtained a decommissioning permit in 2020 and work started in 2021.