General Atomics

GA-ASI produces a series of unmanned aircraft and provides electro-optical, radar, signals intelligence, and automated airborne surveillance systems. GA’s Electromagnetic Systems Division produces electro-magnetic aircraft launch and recovery systems for the US Navy, satellite surveillance, electro-magnetic rail gun, high power laser, hypervelocity projectile, and power conversion systems. Other GA affiliates include General Atomics Europe GmbH with principal facilities in the German States of Saxony and Brandenburg, Heathgate Resources Pty Ltd (South Australia), GA Uranium Resources Group, and the GA-Honeywell uranium conversion partnership. The company occupies 8+ million square feet of engineering, laboratory and manufacturing facilities and comprises over 13,000 employees.

General Atomics (GA) was established as a division of General Dynamics Corporation in mid-1955. It was the creation of General Dynamics chairman John Jay Hopkins and Frederic de Hoffmann, GA's first general manager and president. De Hoffmann was a veteran of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. GA's very first offices were in the General Dynamics facility on Hancock Street in San Diego. The next summer some of the most eminent nuclear scientists and engineers of the day gathered at GA's next temporary headquarters, a schoolhouse on San Diego's Barnard Street. (GA would later "adopt" the school in 1994 as part of its Education Outreach program.) Their order of business was to find suitable peacetime uses for nuclear energy, and to come up with a commercial product for GA to produce. The company spent the next 20 years trying to make high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) technology competitive with the light water version technology that was preferred in the 1950s, reported Business Week. The latter used water to cool the reactor. GA's process used helium, reducing pollution and overheating concerns and lessening the amount of fuel needed. Helium also did not become radioactive, unlike water. GA's reactor design used a graphite core, which could tolerate an increase of several thousand degrees above its 850 degrees Celsius operating temperature without damage. GA was developing a Maritime Gas Cooled Reactor for the Atomic Energy Commission. It was also studying controlled fusion for a group of Texas utilities. A prototype gas-cooled reactor built on the system of the Philadelphia Electric Co. went online in the late 1960s. Project Orion was an attempt to design a 4,000-ton, long-range spacecraft powered by controlled nuclear pulses, or explosions. The project progressed to the point that a small test vehicle (dubbed "Hot Rod") powered by conventional explosives was built. However, Orion was canceled in 1965 due to political and technical challenges. Founding President Frederic de Hoffmann had left GA in 1969; he went on to head the Salk Institute. GA was led during the mid-1970s by Bill Finley. Finley's 1977 Business Plan set forth new goals of profitability and diversification. Dr. Harold Agnew, formerly director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, became president of GA in March 1979. The next month, the Three Mile Island accident dramatically affected the entire nuclear power industry. GA claimed its gas-cooled reactors were the safest in the world, and would have been capable of averting the Three Mile Island disaster. Still, the new regulatory environment raised the cost of operating any type of nuclear plant. Agnew set GA on a course of diversification. It used its concrete structure expertise to build offshore oil tanks. The company also looked abroad, participating in a joint U.S.-Japan fusion power development project called Doublet III. From December 1975 to June 1984, GA was embroiled in litigation by Westinghouse Electric Corp. and United Nuclear Corp. (UNC), alleging an international price-fixing conspiracy. Twenty-eight other companies were also charged in lawsuits in Illinois and New Mexico. GA ended up settling claims against it for $200 million. Gulf Oil bought out its 50-50 partner, Royal Dutch/Shell Group's Scallop Nuclear Inc., effective January 1, 1982. Gulf became full owner of General Atomics, while Scallop received a large piece of land next to GA's San Diego headquarters. General Atomics then became known as GA Technologies Inc. Chevron became GA's owner after its merger with Gulf Oil in mid-1984. Two Denver-area investors, Neal and Linden Blue, acquired GA from Chevron Corporation for more than $50 million in 1986. The company was then known as GA Technologies. After the buy, Dr. Kerry Dance, who had submitted an employee buyout bid, left the company as president, a position he had held since January 1985 following the retirement of Dr. Harold Agnew. Neil Blue became CEO and board cha