Inside MIT's Nuclear Reactor.

[NNadir]

I've been spending part of the day at MIT's Nuclear Engineering Department where I came across this cool video:

[PoliticAverse]

1. Fun fact: Columbia University built and intended to operate a nuclear reactor in New York City

(in upper Manhattan at 120th street) but lots of legal challenges delayed the project and fuel was never loaded into the reactor which was eventually abandoned.

Columbia University Ends Court Challenge Over Nuclear Reactor
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/20/archives/columbia-university-ends-court-challenge-over-nuclear-reactor.html

[lapfog_1]

2. That control panel looked like it was early 60s technology.

possibly 1970s.

Maybe time to update things?

[NNadir]

3. Maybe so, but it works.

I thought the same thing when I looked at the panel, but I'm not sure if the issue is more cosmetic than practical.

I was very pleased to see the types of experiments being performed using the reactor. They are cutting edge, experiments whose goal I understand well.

I'm sure they've modernized where appropriate. It is MIT after all.

When we dropped my son off for his internship at Oak Ridge, we went on the public tour, including a tour of the world's first continuously operated nuclear reactor. They had paper chart recorders in the (small) control room, and they'd set up mannikins to show how the technicians pushed fuel rods through the core with sticks.

Yesterday I visited my son's laboratory, where he was working on hardness testing of special alloy welds. There was a dot printer in it, and a very old x-ray diffraction unit and all kinds of stuff that looked like it came out of the 1970's and 1960's. He wasn't using this stuff, but it was there, and if you didn't know better, you'd think the lab was primitive. (His hardness tester was highly computerized, albeit not to the level he would have preferred.)

His samples were highly polished. They have a very fancy polishing device, but he chooses to polish his samples by hand, because he says, he can control the quality of his samples better than the fancy machine.

The MIT reactor has been operating a long time, and it seems like it is a critical instrument. I'm not sure if it's wise to shut it down to make it look better.

[hunter]

4. It's been in operation since 1958.

The mix of old and new reminds me of many university labs I've visited.

When my children were applying for college I was always a little suspicious of those showing off sparkling labs with brand new equipment.

One starts to wonder "Is this a working lab or a set piece designed to impress wealthy parents who might not know any better?"

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Not broken. Don't fix. nt

[lapfog_1]

6. Parts wear out.

And it is always "not broke" until it breaks.

The "not broke, don't fix" attitude is not what you want with nuclear reactors, airplanes, etc.

[hunter]

7. There are many airplanes of that era still flying.

Replace the parts that wear on a regular schedule and inspect, inspect, inspect.

Install modern instruments, control systems, and materials when they are a significantly improved in comparison to the old.

44,000 of these have been built since 1955:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_172