Karen Schaefer: It was 1958 and the dawn of the nuclear age. After World War II, companies like Westinghouse and General Electric rushed to develop a new technology many believed would become the energy source of the future. Nuclear power, split from the very building blocks of the universe, was the obvious successor to fossil fuels. It would provide safe, cheap, reliable energy for a growing nation - and one day get man into space. That was the thinking when NASA built a 60-megawatt nuclear test reactor on 27-acres at its Plum Brook research facility near Sandusky. Today, the now-closed reactor is scheduled for demolition.
Keith Peecook: They were trying to find out what happens to metals and other materials when they were exposed to radiation. At that time, NASA had a nuclear power program for space...
KS: Keith Peecook is senior project manager for the decommissioning of Plum Brook. It's his job to oversee the environmental clean-up of the now cold reactor. It was shut down in 1973 after NASA ran out of funding and had to abandon plans for manned nuclear-powered flights to Mars. But Peecook says before that happened, the facility operated at full power for eleven years. It provided NASA with essential knowledge about what would happen to manmade materials in the harsh environment of space. Those same experiments gave the nascent nuclear industry invaluable information about what worked to safely harness the most powerful known force in the universe.
KP: The area we're in now is the hot cell gallery...
Len Homyak: I'm Len Homyak, I came to the Sandusky area in February of 1962 and came in as a project engineer. I originally worked for the Goodyear Atomic Energy in southern Ohio, before I came here. As project engineer, I was responsible for putting experiments into the reactor.
Jack Crooks: I'm Jack Crooks. In June of 1959 I graduated from college as a chemical engineer with nuclear option. I started full-time with - at that time it was NASA... I spent 16 years - the life of the reactor - at the facility, doing a wide variety of jobs. I started as a process engineer - I spent several years on shift overseeing operations of the reactor.
Jack Ross: My name is Jack Ross and I came to Plum Brook in March of 1962. My particular background was health physics. Unlike most of the people at PB I was not a NASA employee. Our contract was to evolve the safety procedures in accordance with what NASA's wishes and guidelines were...
Mike Sudsina: My name is Mike Sudsina. I arrived in Plum Brook in 1965 with credentials of 13 years of nuclear experience - hot lab experience - working at Westinghouse Electric in Pittsburgh. Initially when I started here at Plum Brook I worked as a supervisory engineer on working three shifts for Lockheed Aircraft, working on the loop experiments, where the loop experiments were put into the reactor.
KS: It was the cutting edge technology of its day. But the Plum Brook reactor was also a unique opportunity for nuclear engineers eager to unlock the potential of the atom. Len Homiak, Jack Crooks, Jack Ross, and Mike Sudsina are retired now. But together they spent more than fifty years working here.
MS: I guess I've always been a hands-on type person and I just got enthralled in working with the manipulators. Everything had to work by remote control, we had to work through three-foot glass to prevent radiation effects on the personnel doing it. I guess I ran one of the first radiological impact tests in the country.
JC: I think - what the focus from an operations standpoint was - to make sure the reactor operated safely, the experiments operated safely, and that we were meeting the needs of the project managers here on site and the people at Lewis or whoever. We did radiations for Westinghouse, for commercial fuel applications.
JR: My basic motivation was, one, of getting into a facility to exert whatever control I could have on getting off on the right foot and starting off on a good, firm control of potential hazards.
LH: Len Homyak again. When I came to Plum Brook in 1962, we had a mandate to put a man - or a few men - on the moon in 13 years.
KS: Although they were successful, NASA has since moved on to a new technology, using hydrogen fuel in its space shuttle vehicles. But the product of knowledge produced at Plum Brook became a vital resource to an industry that now provides a fifth of the nation's power. This year, NASA began decommissioning the Plum Brook facility. Keith Peecook says they hope to have the work completed by 2007. In Sandusky, Karen Schaefer, 90.3.