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Sep 22, 2022
11:06:34am
72PONY Walk-on
RE: It's a small experimental reactor
Its a TRIGA reactor, several universities have them.

Pretty cool history around the TRIGA MK1 and TRIGA reactors. Google TRIGA reactor, they are really quite fascinating. Teller who developed them famously said of the TRIGA reactor "could be given to a bunch of high school children to play with without any fear that they would get hurt." This is because as the temperature of the core increases the reactivity decreases which means they will not melt down.

Maybe not as safe in the hands of a crazed Ute fan?

I did the demo plan and engineering oversight for the grandfather of this reactor the TRIGA MK1 at General Atomics in La Jolla CA. back in 2014. I have a few pictures of myself taking a ride in the bosun's chair down into the belly of the beast.

The operator of the reactor was an 80 year old guy named Bill that still came to work every day. He gave me several faceted topaz stones that they had turned blue by sending them down in a shoe box... and some meteorites from his collection.

Fun group of people. One of the people on the project was a scientist that had help to developed the small modular nuclear reactors developed at INL. Fascinating technology... and while I am certainly not one of them it was interesting to work with some of our nations best scientific minds.
72PONY
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72PONY
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