page_title: Fairway Rock
section_title: The radioisotope thermoelectric generator
hierarchical_section_title: Fairway Rock / History / The radioisotope thermoelectric generator
caption_attribution_description: English: Servicing RTGs atop Fairway Rock (early 1990s); original picture from the U.S. Navy's Arctic Submarine Laboratory, http://www.csp.navy.mil/asl/Alaska.htm
context_page_description: Fairway Rock is a small islet in the Bering Strait, located southeast of the Diomede Islands and west of Alaska's Cape Prince of Wales. It has an area of 0.3 km². Known to Eskimo natives of the Bering Strait region in prehistory, Fairway was documented by James Cook in 1778 and named by Frederick Beechey in 1826. Although uninhabited, the island is a nesting site for seabirds — most notably the least and crested auklet — which prompt egg-collecting visits from local indigenous peoples. The United States Navy placed radioisotope thermoelectric generator-powered environmental monitoring equipment on the island from the 1960s through the 1990s.
context_section_description: On August 11, 1966, the US Navy placed a strontium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) atop Fairway Rock for "powering environmental instruments". At this time Commander John C. LeDoux was in charge of NavFac's shore based nuclear power program, whose over 200 trained men only had one power plant to run. With a new NavFac Chief taking over soon, Commander LeDoux feared the program might be cancelled if it had no other applications. In his memoir LeDoux writes that, "like good marketers we produced a catalog of what was available and sent it to all Navy commands." Within two weeks they received an urgent request for a generator at Fairway Rock.
  Fairway Rock's then-current generator was propane fueled and could not operate in the winter months. Since the generator powered "detectors on the ocean floor for submarine traffic heading North"  it was considered essential that it be replaced rapidly. However, moving the new generator from Baltimore to Alaska to Fairway Rock would be a complicated process and LeDoux suspected that "red tape" would delay the operation for a long time.
  Commander LeDoux was able to use contacts in the AEC to get approval to move the generator in only 4 days, which he considered "a miracle in itself." A weekly Air Force flight to Vietnam was able to take it to Alaska. Getting the generator onto the island itself proved more difficult, since there were no Navy helicopters in the area. A bush pilot was contracted, two refueling locations were set up by the Army Corps of Engineers, and a Coast Guard escort (USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282)) was assigned, allowing the journey over the Bering Strait to be made safely. In the end, the project only took 10 days and "was done with no money or paperwork – mostly phone calls and personal visits." LeDoux was impressed that a project involving so many disparate military and non-military parties could be carried off in such a short span of time.
  The device, developed by Martin Marietta, was the first commercially developed instrument of its kind deployed for unattended field use by the U.S. government. This use was cited in 1978 congressional hearings on potential uses for nuclear waste. In 1981 two additional RTGs were added. All three RTGs were removed from the rock in 1995 in a joint Army/Navy operation with Chinook helicopters from B Company, 4th Battalion, 123rd Aviation Regiment, the "Sugar Bears" of Fort Wainwright, AK.
  The three RTGs were transported from Fort Wainwright, AK to the Richland Consolidation Facility at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state for disposal.
caption: U.S. military perform maintenance on one of the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) left atop Fairway to power environmental monitoring equipment.
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