gfish | (no subject)

(no subject)

Today I was exposed to less than 0.1 millirems of radiation. That isn't unusual, of course, but I don't usually spend the day wearing a digital dosimeter, touring a nuclear reactor.

Cherenkov radiation is pretty.

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What reactor is this, and where is it?

The research reactor at WSU, on the far east side of Washington. Cute little thing.

Can anyone get a tour, or does one need connections?

I'm not sure. I did this with the radiochem class that

neuro42 is TAing. They mentioned doing tours for the campus open house, though, so I don't think they're amazingly restrictive.

Oooh, a *digital* dosimeter... When I spent a day at Ohio State's reactor they didn't even pin film ones on us. I seem to recall that at the top of the reactor pool, a meter was reading about 2-3 mRem/hr, and I spent about 10 minutes up there. The reactor was running at about 10% power (basically enough to show us the Cherenkov glow), but they told us they don't like people at the top of the pool when running closer to full power (500 kw).

And yes, Cherenkov radiation is very pretty... All misty and blue...

Huh, this was running at 1Mw and the readings above the core were far less than that. Do you remember how deep the pool there is? This one was 25 feet.

Their website says the pool is 20 feet deep, and according to my notes, the top of the core is about 15 below the surface. That may be the difference. OSU's reactor is pretty old, so perhaps those conventions changed with time...

(Looking at WSU's site)

Oh, it's a Triga... Quite a bit bigger pool... OSU's pool could be more accurately described as a "cement tank" as it's only about 4 feet across. I can't seem to find the age of the WSU reactor. OSU's reactor is basically a one-off Lockheed design (okay, two-off, as there's a sister reactor at Purdue, but it's licensed for much less power).

The OSU lab's site is here: http://www-nrl.eng.ohio-state.edu/

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