Inside MIT's Nuclear Reactor

October 14, 2018 10:28 AM

On the corner of busy Mass ave and Albany street (slyt) a nondescript older looking industrial building and what looks like a water tank resides an active research nuclear reactor (not for power generation). If you don't watch all do jump to the end (12:30) where they ask the student operator her favorate button and test her knowledge!
posted by sammyo (22 comments total)

Cheery folks! So interesting, thank you.
posted by doornoise at 11:16 AM on October 14, 2018

Loved that the backup radiation detection device hails from a completely different era. And that the "guest" was, at every opportunity, saying "wait, this isn't killing me?"
posted by zenon at 11:35 AM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love the fact that women are featured prominently in this video. Physics has such a huge problem with sexism (*cough*). Any opportunity that we can take to show women doing physics can only help with the gender disparity and, perhaps, the sexism problem.
posted by Betelgeuse at 11:49 AM on October 14, 2018 [10 favorites]

There was an article about it a few years ago in Boston Magazine.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:28 PM on October 14, 2018

That console is the direct descendant of Hanford B
posted by mikelieman at 1:59 PM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I used to wave at that tank every day. I've spent a terrifying amount of my life in close proximity to reactors.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:08 PM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Awesome indeed. I love the fact that it runs on technology that looks like it dates from the fifties, and probably does. I guess if you want to update something in such a high risk environment you're going to do it very slowly, in very small steps. And then still keep the old stuff, like their contamination checks in the exit route.

I wandered past there with my 12yo son on a random visit to Cambridge last year (heading for the MIT museum) and, of course, had no idea it was there, so this was great for us too see.

I too love that women feature so prominently. I had a similar experience on a visit to the National Physical Laboratory (a bit closer to home!), also last year. It is hardly surprising that men like Alessandro Strumia, who are evidently dependent on post-hoc and question-begging arguments to shore up their crumbling "scientist" facades, seem to be feeling so threatened; they should be!
posted by merlynkline at 2:57 PM on October 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

Quote"I love the fact that it runs on technology that looks like it dates from the fifties, and probably does"

That is because modern electronics are far more likely to be affected by the radiation than the older transistor stuff.
The same applies to spacecraft and satellites that will be exposed to high levels of radiation from the solar wind and space.
posted by Burn_IT at 3:56 PM on October 14, 2018 [5 favorites]

That was super cool! I loved how the fifties electronics are overlaid with modern technology (and cheapo official clock that they could've picked up at a CVS) -- sort of an underexplored aesthetic in sci fi, where folks might be going around in spaceships wearing medieval robes or have a stack of old tomes but seldom have multiple strata of working space gear.
posted by condour75 at 4:45 PM on October 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

Our reactor at the University of Maryland is similarly old school, so to speak. As a converted progressive nuclear power enthusiast, I'm always fascinated by the fact that my endless walks to and from the distant parking lot I was always assigned back in my undergrad days of yore took me past a genuine honest-to-Fermi nuclear reactor.
posted by sonascope at 5:48 PM on October 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was licensed on a similar swimming-pool reactor twentymumble years ago, with the same pea-green console. We were already doing medical activations for money and shipping them several states away, as reactors like this were already closing down. I don't think it made lots of money, but we valued the work. (Occasional bureaucratic comedy when a licensed operator was wanted to transport the sample and none of us had cars, and half didn't have driver's licenses. Who had time to leave campus? the reactor was a lot of work.)

merlynkline, having been a young woman being photographed in the reactor at the time -- and not the first by decades -- and then being similarly a Girls Can Do That? dev and not the first by generations -- I like to see women at the reactor, but I don't think it does much to affect sexism at large. Women who control money and hiring, that changes adult minds. Young women being cool but not in charge are replaceable, like Slayers.
posted by clew at 6:13 PM on October 14, 2018 [5 favorites]

I've been thinking about the other side of odinsdream's question -- how many systems in our tech-oikos require work that's now only possible at the remaining research reactors? And I can't tell, partly because I think all the reactors have developed different installed equipment and therefore capabilities and markets, so it's a pain to google. Ours certainly kept busy on educational and research work, and the research was often someone else's education -- our "DOE" was balanced between Energy and Education. But the funding was educational or philanthropic and always had been.

Which is worrisome, because I suspect The Market doesn't keep track of that kind of bottleneck and can be surprised when The Market accidentally closes it off. Certainly the hospitals that wanted some warmed-up barium* on a hours-tight schedule on a few days' notice were dismayed when their instate provider shut down, and that can't have been quick.

Educational means outreach means tours, and we loved giving tours, though, so if you live near one or visit and are curious, see what their schedule is.

*Only moderately sure it was barium. Something someone sick was going to drink.
posted by clew at 6:50 PM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Reed College (Portland, OR) is home to the only research reactor in the world that is owned and operated by an undergraduate educational institution.
posted by Brocktoon at 6:59 PM on October 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Georgia Tech had one of these research nuclear reactors. It was shut down in the late 80s among safety concerns (and nuclear protests on campus). Just prior to the 1996 Olympics, for which Georgia Tech campus served as the Olympic Village (athletes residence), it was defueled, and after the Olympics they dismantled it.

Here is a lavishly illustrated slideshow (PDF) with the history of the reactor and the decommission process that it went through in the late 1990s.

The site is now a walkway between a nanotechnology building and a parking deck, both built in the 2000s.
posted by intermod at 7:42 PM on October 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

→ how many systems in our tech-oikos require work that's now only possible at the remaining research reactors?

There were a few medical isotopes that disappeared for a while when NRU got more leaky than usual over 2008-2009.
posted by scruss at 7:44 PM on October 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I found the Boston article really irritating; more words given to why the author felt that `radiation' was dangerous than to either real dangers or the engineering reasons MIT's reactor has to be confident of its safety.
posted by clew at 9:51 PM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm a little surprised this is an official MIT production. At this point it's probably safe to call me a "lifer" and I had always assumed they tried to let the reactor fly under the radar, for fear of the sort of reflexive community worry in that Boston article. It's still a little obscured; there are no establishing shots to show exactly how it relates to the neighborhood (except for the quick drone footage at the top) and it goes to whiteout when they leave. You only get a quick glimpse of a parking garage that is no longer there, from an angle you'd never be able to reproduce from the street. I wonder how much of that was intentional.

For many years I parked in the lot adjacent to the reactor and figured it was one of the safest spots on campus - the reactor building is absolutely bristling with cameras and other security apparatus.
posted by range at 5:53 AM on October 15, 2018

> there are no establishing shots to show exactly how it relates to the neighborhood (except for the quick drone footage at the top)

My only knowledge of Cambridge is the one time I was there for a couple of days, last year. I immediately recognised Boston in the background of that drone shot, and from there took about 10s to find the bright green and red sports stadium on a GMaps aerial view, and another 30s to get it on street view and see that my GMaps timeline from that visit went right by. So I hope they weren't trying too hard to keep the location quiet.
posted by merlynkline at 6:04 AM on October 15, 2018

This was insanely interesting. Thanks!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:15 AM on October 15, 2018

Oh they definitely draw a big box around it including the extremely visible brick chimney that's visible from every nearby street. But l think it may have been a conscious design decision to not have any sort of street-level "humanizing" shot of the neighborhood - it is possible, for example, to leave the reactor in two different directions and have the next object you hit be a restaurant. Instead I'm pretty sure they headed for the train tracks.
posted by range at 9:19 AM on October 15, 2018

Considering the address is shown for a full second at 0:13, they're not hiding it too well.

I know this reactor's in good hands, as there's an HP scientific calculator on the operator console.
posted by scruss at 1:22 PM on October 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

I know this reactor's in good hands, as there's an HP scientific calculator on the operator console

We used a TI-35 in the Navy.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:55 AM on October 16, 2018 [1 favorite]