Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory - On paper, it seemed feasible as an incredible amount of power could be housed in a very small space, however the findings from the Dawsonville laboratory proved that nuclear aircraft would take more than what was originally thought.
The development of a nuclear powered aircraft was never realized. It is conjectured that a firewall and containment system needed to protect the flight crew failed to be successfully developed. Some claimed that the containment and firewall systems were too heavy for the aircraft.
Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory
Lockheed also used the reactor to test the effects of radiation on military equipment. In the late 1950s, the United States Air Force purchased property in Dawson Forest to build the GNAL which was then operated by Lockheed Martin.
A Bittersweet Change In Career
The site needed to be developed in order for it to house the nuclear reactors, firehouse, administration building and the reaction effects facility which meant clear cutting thousands of trees, Mahaffey said. The bucolic community of Dawsonville, some 40 miles north of Atlanta, became home to the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory (GNAL) from the 1950's until 1971. In 1956, the United States government purchased 10,000 acres of open fields and woods from the Tucker family of
Dawsonville. Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, along with the Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission, began construction of the GNAL- also known as Air Force Plant # 67. The site is near the intersection of Highway 9 and Dawson Forest Road in Southwest Dawson County.
Following a vague map of the original complex I found online, I drove further down the road to find what remained of the main facility. This is where the reactor once hung suspended in the air, and tunnels run underground.
There's nothing left but cement foundations now. When the lab was decommissioned the laboratory was flooded and the entryways filled in with rubble. "A lot of people said 'Oh, I wouldn't want to work there because you don't know what they're going to do, somebody might come over and bomb it,'" Thompson said.
Matt Park Multi-Use Trail
"A lot of people were scared and didn't want it to be in the county. They were afraid, just like I said 'they'll come over here and bomb us' or 'it'll explode and we'll all be blown to kingdom come' because nobody knew.
There was no way that they could possibly know.” When the lab closed, all of the dangerous materials were removed, either being destroyed or hauled out of Dawson County to be buried. Other materials that could be repurposed were either given away or auctioned off, Thompson recalled, as some of her friends from the lab took pieces of metal home.
There is not much left of the facility today. The only real structure still standing is the hot cell building, an imposing concrete and steel structure protected by barbed wire and three security fences. It's located on state forest land, next to the staging area for a local horse trail.
Although it's easy to access, unless you know its history there's little evidence of what's inside other than the amount of security fencing and NO TRESPASSING signs. She also remembers a day when all the secretaries asked to see the reactor.
No Funding Leads To Eventual Closing Of Plant
Although the women weren't able to see the reactor when it was hot their bosses did let them ride the small train that transported materials to and from the reactor. The GNAL buildings inside Dawson Forest were dismantled and hauled away.
The hot cell building, the only remaining structure still standing, was boarded up with stainless steel to keep intruders from entering the radioactive building. To this day, the building remains radioactive with particulates of Cobalt 60.
I've seen photos from other explorers who managed to dig their way into the top level of the underground facility. This is not an easy task. The tunnels are still flooded, and cannot be accessed by digging into the facility's ceiling.
There are rumors about how deep the tunnels go underground, and exactly what is still down there. I hope one day I'll be able to come back with the right equipment and try to find those answers myself.
Charleston Park
"An enormous amount of work was done to find out how having this reactor affects the environment. I'll give them that," Mahaffey said. "They wanted to find out how groundwater would transport radiation and they dug wells all over the facility, and they would have monitors monitoring what type of radiation, how much radiation and knew how fast radiation could transport in the environment."
By 1960, Thompson was ready to switch gears in her career and enrolled in beauty school in Gainesville where she attended night class twice a week for two years to fulfill her dream of opening her own beauty shop.
Despite the fears that often surrounded the lab, Thompson said she never felt unsafe working at GNAL. She worked as a secretary under John Bell, who oversaw the maintenance department of the facility, in her late 20s and was never really exposed to the nuclear reactor during her time there.
Under Lockheed's umbrella, the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory was a small facility that was tasked with testing the effects of radiation on different objects and materials to study its effects. Its main focus was to create an efficient bomber aircraft that could carry atomic weapons while shielding the pilots.
Cartecay Loop
The facility closed permanently and was dismantled in 1971. Since his graduate studies at Georgia Tech in the 1970s, Mahaffey has compiled research on the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory (GNAL) which has been published in his 2017 book "Atomic Adventures" where he discusses what happened behind closed doors at the site.
Although the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Facility has been out of commission for nearly 50 years, local residents can still be heard whispering about two-headed deer and oak leaves the size of elephant ears spotted around the nuclear facility's remains.
The crown also meant that Thompson was able to get a glimpse into some of the nuclear laboratory when she posed in front of a four foot deep glass window that separated scientists from the robotic arms that were tasked with handling radiated materials.
3.3 mi 5.3 km • 208' up 63.36 m up • 207' down 63.05 m down Billions of dollars were poured into the Nuclear Aircraft Project that GNAL was part of during the 1960s, but funding was cut during the John F. Kennedy administration and the GNAL was closed in pieces and eventually closed completely in 1971.
Chicopee Woods
"We'd have to wear it on our outside clothing to measure if there was any radiation at all seeping around," Thompson said. "Then at the end of the day we'd have to go back through that little thing and leave our badge, and they would check it that night to see if there was any radiation."
10.3 mi 16.6 km • 474' up 144.5 m up • 474' down 144.52 m down "I loved working there. I hated to quit, but I wanted to have a baby more and have a beauty shop more," Thompson said.
"I felt like it was more of a career because I felt like eventually, they were just testing stuff, it was just a test site." "It was like being in school when they have a smoke alarm — they would have an alarm for everybody to get ready to leave the plant, line up at the gate and get ready to leave in case of an emergency," Thompson said.
"Most of the time it was just practice runs. We never really had to leave.” "It just gradually shaped into this fantastic facility. It was a singular facility. It wasn't like anything else in the world and it was in Dawsonville," Mahaffey said.
Becoming A Beauty Queen
"It was out in the woods. That's what they wanted. They wanted it where nobody would sneak around and want to know what it was, but that didn't work." "This was all unknown," Mahaffey said. "You have to build a facility that'll test it in real ways, not just computer simulations, and it has to be somewhere where you're not potentially going to wipe out a city."
Scattered nearby are empty concrete foundations that no longer have any clear purpose. If you follow a muddy path into the forest and you'll see traces of the old railway that brought radioactive material from the reactor to the hot cell building.
On the spring day I visited the forest is cold and eerily calm. The only sounds are the drizzle of rain and the echo of rifle shots from hunters somewhere deep in the woods. "Don't forget history.
Do not forget this history. It's important," Mahaffey said. "It's a look into the Cold War when the Cold War was running very hot, and you have to realize the danger of it and what we were doing about it.
Ung Oakwood Mtb Trail
It's definitely not something to be forgotten." The rumors circulating about the former site of the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory have become folklore and remain an interesting topic of conversation for Dawson County residents. Tall tales of deer with three eyes or two sets of antlers are common.
Also, some claim seeing an "albino" black bear and other albino animals. Despite these rumors, today Dawson County is anything but remote and unpopulated. The "400 corridor" has been the impetus for increased commercial and residential developments.
Dawson County is home to many mountain, lake, and golf communities. Tens of thousands of families now call the area home. "All these people kept saying... 'I bet it's because you worked around all that radiation.' All these rumors are not true," Thompson said.
"Rumors about radiation harming the people that worked there because it was very carefully checked and there was never any radiation." "You couldn't be on the property unless you had a security clearance and logging truck drivers didn't have security clearances," Mahaffey said.
Big Creek Park
"What they did was they just piled up all these dead trees, thousands of dead trees in the exact center of the thing and set fire to it." Spam? Being a jerk/offensive? This is about an injury or accident
Something else? Please explain. "Everything we knew started out as a rumor, and some of them were right and some of them were wrong," Mahaffey said. "Not so much anymore, but back then everything nuclear was, by its nature, a secret."
Nuclear scientists began to understand that different materials took on new qualities once irradiated. This new series of testing led to the formation of Lockheed Nuclear Products. Various products were transported on rail cars to the reactor site, irradiated, then sent to the cooling site.
One such product was wood. Ordinary pine was injected with a resin, then irradiated. The resulting product was marketed under the name "Lockwood." It is said that this wood was used as flooring in the Atomic Energy Commission facility in Maryland.
"If you could cause fission in that uranium it makes a great deal of power in a very small space," Mahaffey said. "I mean you could have a thing that's the size of basketball that gives you a billion watts of power."
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