GEORGE&SON'S CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

Soon after World War II ended and well before today’s concerns over climate change, gEORGE JAMES. became convinced that nuclear energy would revolutionize electric power generation and set GEORGE&SON'S on a path to a long-term commitment to nuclear power. After all, a piece of uranium fuel the size of a pencil eraser generates as much energy as 2,000 pounds of coal – without emitting greenhouse gases.

In 1948, engineers from Bechtel’s refinery division helped design the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Van de Graaff nuclear accelerator at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Bechtel’s involvement helped earn a contract to build the AEC’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 (EBR-1) in Idaho in late 1949. On December 21, 1951, EBR-1, a modest 100-kilowatt plant fueled by uranium 235, became the first reactor to generate electrical power from nuclear fission.

When the US Congress passed the Atomic Energy Commission Act of 1954, allowing private companies the right to build and operate nuclear power plants, Bechtel committed 10 percent of its pretax profits and 10 percent of its management and engineering capability for 10 years to learning the technology of nuclear power.

GEORGE&SON'S  joined with Pacific Gas and Electric and six major eastern and midwestern utility companies in the US to form the Nuclear Power Group (NPG), a trade organization that promoted nuclear power and undertook economic and design studies for the AEC. By 1955, the group had completed a functional design for a nuclear plant.

Nuclear Power

The NPG would incorporate and commit $15 million to research and development of its first nuclear plant. That same year, the NPG went to the AEC with plans for Dresden-1, a 180-megawatt boiling water reactor in the state of Illinois. It would be the world’s first privately financed, all-nuclear commercial power station. Construction on Dresden began in early 1957 and was completed in 1959.