At a press conference held on 19 August 1954, (then) Major General Sturgis, Chief of Engineers, announced the plan by the Army and the AEC to build the "package" power plant at Fort Belvoir. A location in a "closed area" of the garrison had been selected, near a point at which Accotink Bay (aka, Gunston Cove) joins the Potomac River. The general said the design of the package reactor resembles the nuclear power plant on the US Navy's (newly launched) nuclear submarine Nautilus. He also said the reactor could be housed in a building 29 feet wide, 42 feet high and 80 feet long. The Army was sending out a request for proposals, that day, to "33 qualified bidders", and companies were being asked to come up with a "competitive lump-sum bid", rather than a cost-plus estimate. On 14 December 1954, the AEC announced that the contract was being given to American Locomotive Company of New York, whose $2 million bid was the lowest of the 18 proposals received. Asking companies to submit a lump-sum bid was hailed, at that time, as a sign of how much progress had been made in reactor power plant design by mid-1954, such that companies now had sufficient experience and could calculate costs with confidence. Construction of the building to house the reactor began on 5 October 1955 in the southeast "corner" of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, alongside Gunston Cove, off the Potomac River. According to a news note in the December 1955 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "Construction of the 'package' or portable reactor has been started at Fort Belvoir, VA. Alco Products is the contractor for the Defense Department and the AEC. The reactor will generate about 2,000 kilowatts of electricity, enough for a community of about 5,000 people." Alco Products supplied the reactor, pressurizer and steam generator, while Westinghouse Electric Corporation supplied the canned-rotor pumps, General Electric supplied the turbine and generator, the Lummus Company supplied the condenser, and Minneapolis-Honeywell installed the controls. By late October 1955, the Army pushed ALCO to accelerate construction towards a completion date of 10 July 1957. As a result, all major work was completed by March 1957. Reactor goes critical, April 1957 Construction was completed in 18 months, the SM-1 reactor achieved first criticality on 8 April 1957, and the plant was formally opened in a public ceremony on 29 April 1957. Designed as a small-scale,