Nuclear Power
... McMurdo Base was the sight [sic] of a portable 1.8 MW nuclear power station ("Nukey Poo") erected halfway up Observation Hill by the US Navy in 1962. The high hopes held out for Nukey Poo never eventuated and it struggled through 10 years of operation beset with shutdowns and radiation leaks. The reactor was eventually shipped back to the United States along with 101 large drums of radioactive earth. Later, another 11,000 cubic metres of contaminated rock were removed. It took six years before the site was decontaminated enough for unrestricted use (May, 1988). A second nuclear power plant was planned for McMurdo Station, and others for Byrd Station, and the South Pole but they never eventuated.
2 MegaWatts would do for about 1000 people (my guess, and remember it's cold there). Here's a photo of a 2 MW diesel generator (the quantity of fuel needed isn't hinted at). I assume this is fairly typical.
Judging by this photo of McMurdo Sound ('from Observation Hill')...
... it uses diesel fuel. I'd guess such an installation existed since the 'Base' was established, and the nuclear power station was always an optional extra, as otherwise they'd have all frozen while it was installed. So it seems possible that, following on claims that a good cheap nuclear power source would be ideal there, a fake reactor was installed, complete with inevitable failures. It would have looked strange if it hadn't been attempted. So it may have been part of the fraud all along.
