On January 3, 1961, nine days after Christmas, Richard Legg, John Bymes, and Richard Mckinley were killed in a remote desert in eastern Idaho. Their deaths occurred when a nuclear reactor exploded at a top-secret base in the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS). Official reports state that the explosion and subsequent reactor meltdown resulted from the improper retraction of the control rod. When questioned about the events that occurred there, officals were very reticent. The whole affair, in fact, was not discussed much, and seemed to disappear with time.