I went on a tour of a nuclear reactor.....very cool!

[newfound77951]

We have a 2 megawatt research reactor here on campus. I've been here 5+ years and have never been inside, but one of my fellow students arranged a tour. It was amazing, just like the movies, the reactor core lives in a 39,000 gallon pool of DI water, and you can see the fuel rods 20+ feet down at the bottom of the pool, complete with the *totally awesome* blue glow! They explained how everything works and the kind of experiments they can do, the reactor is very useful in performing non-destructive elemental analysis of any kind of sample. For example, one of the geology/archaeology students is using it to analyze stone tools and potential quarry sites and see if he can figure out where ancient civilizations mined the stone for their tools and buildings.

No cameras allowed inside but here is a pic of the building from the outside (it's the big white box). I've always though we should show movies on the side of it....

 

[An t-iasg]

That is neat! It doesn't look like a typical reactor building. (but I have nothing around here to compare it to!) It's also smaller than I would have thought. I guess it's a small one for a college campus and not like the industrial/commercial ones. Did you have to wear protective gear on your tour, standing by the core like that?

At my college the campus had its own coal-burning plant to product electricity. How times change!

Other observations: The sky is gorgeous, the other building is interesting too, and the car in the foreground needs a good wash!

 

[QTOFFER]

That must have been something. Too bad, but completely understandable, that cameras weren't allowed inside. Where is the cooling tower, though?

the reactor core lives in a 39,000 gallon pool of DI water

At some point, you were wondering how many fish one could keep in there, weren't you?

 

[newfound77951]

It's not a huge building, but it is pretty visible, especially from the water. I wonder how many of the boats going by on the bay know what it is!

You don't need any protective gear, as the water shields the core. There are detectors all over the place anyway. The building next door is the Atmospheric Chemistry building, which is pretty new, built in the 90's, I think.

QTOFFER, the cooling "towers" are to the left of the reactor. They are pretty small....this reactor is small enough that they can just shut it down and walk away, no need to keep the water moving for the up to 5 days a commercial reactor would need. The water convection alone will keep it cool enough.

And yes, I was thinking about how many fish you could keep in there....except that they'd have to be smart fish, since if they went too close to the core they'd be dead, radioactive fish!

Here's a pic from the water....the reactor does stand out

 

[roka64]

That's pretty cool!!!!

 

[chase33]

Nice pic

 

[Regen311]

The blue glow, the cherenkov radiation, is my favorite part But I'm a Physics nerd, so I love that stuff. (They're caused by charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light in the water, which is awesome I think) All I was thinking when I saw it at the research reactor at Ohio State was how enticing it seemed to jump in and go for a swim... (obviously that would be stupid, but the water was so clear and swimming pool looking!)