Inside 'Clarksville Base' where nuclear materials were once stored

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]In Clarksville, everyone knows Fort Campbell is home to the screaming eagles and the Green Beret. But the post also has a top secret nuclear history you may not know about.

[00:00:10]>> News 2's tour of Clarksville continues as our Mark Kelly takes us back in time to the post Cold War past.

[00:00:18]>> Going to have to give this a yank. It's a while since it's been opened.

[00:00:24]There we go.

[00:00:24]>> Historian Dr. John O'Brien takes us on a tour of Fort Campbell many have not seen firsthand. We had to go underground to experience it ourselves.

[00:00:34]>> As we enter into the the structure, they all look like this. This is the basic shape of every tunnel, just varying lengths.

[00:00:42]>> This tunnel and many others like it on this site are relics of a bygone era enclosed in 3 ft of concrete. 1/3 of the country's nuclear stockpile at one time was stored in this structure.

[00:00:55]>> It's within these chambers that the fissile material was stored. The thing that's about the size of a pony keg said there was a blast and two of them tipped over and all that nuclear material got close together. You could set off a chain reaction that would not be explosive, but it'd be poisonous gamma radiation going all over.

[00:01:14]>> From 1948 to 1969, this was called Clarksville Base, one of only 13 sites in the US. It took the military, Atomic Energy Commission, and a 300-person civilian workforce to safely store this nuclear material. Material that required routine checks and maintenance and strict procedures and codes had to be followed at every level.

[00:01:38]>> The initiator has a half-life of 138 days. So, every 138 days, it needs to be replaced.

[00:01:48]>> O'Brien takes us inside the newly opened museum, the Tennessee Wings of Liberty, which has an exhibit highlighting the post clandestine nuclear story.

[00:01:58]>> It was a top secret program.

[00:02:01]The area was blacked out on maps. It was a no-fly zone. No one was even allowed to park or break down on the roads that surrounded the facility. The guards had shoot-to-kill orders.

[00:02:15]So, it was it was pretty secret.

[00:02:17]>> The security inside here is incredible.

[00:02:19]They had seven of these heavy gates within this one structure before a worker was able to get to any nuclear material.

[00:02:29]>> You get the bank vault open, two-man control required. You have another keyed lock bank drill door behind it. You step into this chamber and you're confronted by a 10-ton blast door that can be only be opened with jacks.

[00:02:48]>> During the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Clarksville base was front and center. The US was on the verge of nuclear war.

[00:02:56]>> During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we went all the way to DEFCON 2 and the weapons here were prepared and were at the gate of Clarksville base ready to be transported to the airfield. That was a pretty scary time.

[00:03:08]>> The US avoided that war. The nuclear weapons remained stored here for a few more years, but in 1969, the government deactivated Clarksville base's secret nuclear program once and for all.

[00:03:21]>> It would be very difficult to re- program today, but it was a a group of uniquely dedicated people uh that that kept us safe during the Cold War.

[00:03:33]>> At Fort Campbell, Mark Kelly, News 2.

[00:03:37]>> Now, out of the 13 nuclear sites across the country, O'Brien says the tunnels and structures here are better preserved than most.