[2] As part of the Army Nuclear Power Program the ship was transferred to the U.S. Army in March 1963, and fitted with a pressurized water reactor, fuelled by used low enriched uranium, designed by Martin Marietta, becoming the world's first floating nuclear power plant, at a cost of $17 million.

[3] Now renamed Sturgis (MH-1A) the reactor began operation on 24 January 1967 at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, generating 10 MWe of electrical power.

The reactor barge was then towed to Gatun Lake in the Panama Canal Zone to provide power, owing to a lack of water for the hydroelectric plant.

However, 38 years later the Army Corps of Engineers deemed there were low enough levels of radioactivity in the mothballed vessel's contaminated areas for it to be scrapped.

It was scheduled to be towed from Virginia to Galveston in April–May 2015 where subcontractor Malin International Ship Repair and Drydock will begin the 12- to 18-month work of removing the contaminated material and placing it in rail cars to be hauled to a hazardous materials disposal site, after which the remaining portions of the vessel will be cut up and sold for scrap value.