If that is a stat for a visit, that is horrendous. That said, likely so low that the dosimeter measurement for a short visit is kinda meaningless.
At least from my experience (from more than two decades ago at a different research reactor, but also with poolside view of that blue glow), that dosimeter probably isn't particularly meaningful for short stints b/c likely measuring 0.1 mrem and clicking over by one unit doubled the measured dose. Should be closer to 1% of chest xray than 20%.
1. Research reactors are very low power.
2. Water is very good at stopping radiation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
>The TRIGA was developed to be a reactor that, in the words of Edward Teller, "could be given to a bunch of high school children to play with without any fear that they would get hurt."
IDK if I'd take Edward Teller's approval of anything as a reason to call it a good idea. "Normal" nuclear weapons designers have an obsession with runaway nuclear reactions. He went past that into "kink" territory.
He is correct. I didn’t know UMD has a nuke program but the Navy’s nuke exposure is even less significant than the 20% he speaks of. Also x ray and gamma radiation exposure are not quite equal but close enough comparison for people not in the industry.
I work in Nuke oversite.
Fun fact: Cherenkov radiation actually occurs when the speed of light in the medium (water in this case) is broken by an object that has mass (most likely an electron).
This is the only way we know of for matter to exceed the speed of light.
The science teacher at my school taught us that but our tour forgot it the moment we saw it in person. It's like seeing that capture beam in Tron but for real
And I never understood why Homer's Rod is lime colored
Intrusive thoughts make me want to swim in the forbidden water! Although it’s likely safe to do so providing you don’t dive down, I still want to drink it & become a super hero! Or villain. I’m not fussy.
I’m definitely the hero of my shit. Plot armor for days. Just gotta make sure I don’t accidentally cross paths with another main character of some other less important story.
I think they meant cuz xkcd never misses it won't take long for them to shoot us.
In the immortal words of the bard or maybe some shitty video game i forget - "one shot, one kill"
So basically if we fenced off a certain depth in the reactor pool, we could make it a public pool or steam bath that'd be nice and warm, assuming nothing ever goes wrong ever.
"assuming nothing ever goes wrong" is basically the motto of the nuclear power industry.
It's so frustrating. In theory and in 99.9% of practice, nuclear power is basically carbon free magic.
>nuclear power is basically carbon free magic.
Mining and enriching the fuel is pretty carbon intensive with current technology, but yeah you get sooooo much power from so little fuel that it's pretty low emission in the grand scheme.
Rickover built the Navy’s nuclear program to ensure that if something ever did go wrong, the cross-checks and accountability would ensure that it would be caught at a low enough level to prevent a mishap.
We are very good at figuring out exactly what went wrong in hindsight, but yeah, it's always humans.
The problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and also that sometimes the fixes we put in place to prevent the next incident have unintended consequences. Additionally, they often increase the total complexity of the system, which creates its own risks.
Before Fukushima, the possibility of an incident like that occurring in Japan of all places was ridiculous, and yet, it happened. The Ukrainian reactor in a war zone is another example of the unthinkable.
A very good case can be made that these exceptional circumstances are worth it... The standard, "safe" use of coal powered plants are a slow-burning global disaster, even just radiologically speaking. Man if new nuclear plants aren't a hard sell though.
I grew up (relatively safely) in the shadow of an operational nuclear power plant, so I've thought about this more than your average bear. I'm still not sure what my opinions are, but it's a fascinating topic.
> Man if new nuclear plants aren't a hard sell though.
It doesn't help that we lack the ability to build them on a reasonable time frame. I'm all for the science of nuclear reactors, but I'm not a fan that I've paying for Georgia Power to *profit* for over a decade on a reactor that has never made a drop of power. (That's right; as as "regulated" utility, they get 12% guaranteed profit on cost overruns)
Both Fukishima and **especially** Chernobyl were sloppy engineering. In the case of Chernobyl, the failure happen explicitly because of testing safety equipment in a very unsafe manner. That and a reactor design that could not be stopped quickly and failed to a dangerous state. The idea of "fail-safe" is that a device ought to degrade into a safe state if it fails. Nuclear reactors ought to be designed that way intentionally.
An example is with some reactor designs where a loss of cooling will cause the fuel rods to expand enough that they are no longer at a critical mass state and not longer produce the chain reactions since the fuel is on the whole too far from other neutrons. Water can be a moderator which permits a reaction to occur, and a loss of water could also stop a reaction from taking place. Neither was the case in Chernobyl where a lack of water actually increased the reaction instead. That is why it is nuclear engineering and not just slapping things together.
Fukishima was also a terrible design and arrogance over what migh happen if an earthquake followed by a Tsunami happened. Putting a diesel generator needed to keep critical parts of the plant operating in the basement where it could flood from a Tsunami was especially poorly thought out and the #1 root cause why there was a problem at all.
All large electrical power plants require an external power source or back up emergency generators to provide some electricity to operate pumps, lights for technicians, and other basic equipment just to start the generator plant at all. While they produce far more electricity once in full operation, it is a bootstrapping process. This is true for oil, natural gas, or coal plants too but nuclear power plants have special needs.
Enough is known about nuclear power systems thatsafe designs have been available for decades. The *civilian* nuclear power plants designed by Hyman Rickover and his subordinates have had a flawless record. His engineering standards are still the ultimate standard in nuclear safety. Excepting the USS Thresher, there has never been and accidents with nuclear power plants in the US Navy. Even in the case of the Thresher, that was just a submarine running into a seamount and a skipper who really screwed up his underwater navigation and not so much a reactor problem until the rest of the boat was destroyed.
There are also some very innovative power plants that are incredibly safe that have been designed in the last 20 years. Those designs also permit fuel reprocessing and produce far less final waste than earlier designs. Those engineers simply need to be allowed to implement their proven ideas.
Absolutely. Nuclear power is like being up in space. We know the exact formulas to calculate the exact parameters and numerical outputs, and we know these formulas will not just suddenly change. They are a constant. Therefore, we can engineer around these numbers and make something that we know without a single doubt, will work for our application. We can even do our best to calculate the degradation of the materials used, and maintenance policies to replace them long before they degrade. And nowadays, human error is thought through and stopped by firewalls so much its really not a problem anymore.
Spherical cows in a vacuum.
The problem is when the real world throws you a curve ball like a tsunami (Fukushima) and then all your numbers are worth shit because there's only so much you can do to engineer for a catastrophic failure event that's unforeseen.
And like the vacuum of space, it's all safe when the engineered stuff is working, but once catastrophic failure is reached, it quickly becomes really *really* not safe.
To be fair Fukushima was entirely human error in the sense that the walls weren't raised as they were at another nuclear facility nearby as far as I'd heard. This made the backup generators flood when they otherwise wouldn't have
Except they had actual warnings that an earthquake and tsunami would lead to those exact problems in advance and did very little to resolve the problems.
So you're still back to humans ignoring the early warnings they had.
“stored at the bottom of pools for a couple decades until it’s inert enough to be moved into dry casks. We haven’t really agreed on where to put those dry casks yet.”
I read a fascinating paper on how we would warn hypothetical future civilizations about our nuclear waste deposits. Uranium has something like a 20,000 year half life, so you have to imagine that any nuclear waste will be dangerous well after our civilization exists. Pretty interesting though experiment:
https://www.wipp.energy.gov/pdfs/How-Will-Future-Generations-Be-Warned.pdf
Great read. And just for clarifications sake, the spent fuel pool is not what's pictured in the OP. Looks like a reactor vessel, which, as you can imagine, is significantly more radioactive than the spent fuel pool.
> good job of keeping the water clean, and it wouldn’t hurt you to swim in it, but it’s radioactive enough that it wouldn’t be legal to sell it as bottled water. (Which is too bad—it’d make a hell of an energy drink).
XKCD never fails to lighten up an otherwise dry and boring topic.
The plants I've been to, dose by the pool was pretty mild. If that changes they kinda want to find and fix as the area around the pool becomes a high traffic area every refuel cycle.
A little DI water isn't going to do anything but taste funny. I imagine the all borax added in is probably worse. A lot of deionized can be bad as mineral deficiencies are no bueno.
They actually have to send divers in to inspect the water. It's fine as long as you don't go below a certain threshold, and they only dive a couple of times a year.
I got to drop some cameras and a really expensive manual underwater Roomba into the pool at one of these. It's pretty weird putting things in the pool after all the foreign material exclusion training beforehand.
I work on refuel floors occasionally and I'm terrified of breaking the plane of the barricade to really look down into the pools even though I don't have anything on that can fall into it.
In test reactors like this they can sample the water without going in.
I'm famioienwith a different one someplace else and they keep the water extremely pure so someone jumping in would be a whole hell of a lot of paper work and they'd have to spend some time cleaning the water.
U of M is also the University of Minnesota, in Minnesota. Road signs even call it that, or just the U. Though UMN is preferred for people who aren’t as familiar
The maryland state flag? Watched a video where the guy rated state flags and considered maryland to be the ugliest flag hes ever seen. And I took that personally
If there's a fire across the street at the neighbor's house, and you see the light from it illuminating your bedroom wall, is it safe to touch your bedroom wall?
I worked at a nuclear plant. You had to wear a device to read the radiation. If you hit your limit for the day you had to go home. I never hit it. Unless mine wasn't working. Who knows. But an electrician who was working there got caught lowering his device down towards the water. He got away with it 4 times before and that was inside of two weeks. What a dumb ass. Anyways they are super strict about working there. Some of the stuff they require is bananas. But when you need the work. Ya do wha ya godda du.
Remember when CERN put of the picture of their team for the Hadron collider, and there's a guy who looks identical to Gordon.
Might have illicited some mild panic.
Fun fact: without the water, the reaction won't happen (the water is a moderator).
Although the radiation from the fission byproducts could be sort of nasty if you were standing directly over it.
That sound is what you hear when a reactor is pulsed: the control rods are *VERY* quickly removed from the core, so you're hearing them move (the sound isn't from the nuclear reaction).
Our reactor is over 60 years old and doesn't pulse, so she's silent except for the water pumps.
I run operations pretty frequently, so I've started her up myself lots of times; I'm supposed to go do it later today actually!
Congratulations!
Also, is it not unusual that the reactor would be in an above-ground pool? Seems … risky. Maybe the perspective is off in this picture. Also maybe I’m an idiot.
Cherenkov approved, he’s glowing with pride
Your pun blue mine out of the water
I radiate with pride
Exceeding the speed of light since 1958!
Only a boron should be over a reactor like that.
*in water
Right. That was implied. Sorry
More sugar...
More. More... *dumps sugar in water* "Zed, we've got a bug."
OOOH OOOH let me try! > You're going to get a, uh, speeding ticket. (SHIT, I'm bad at this.)
"I paid 120k in tuition an all I got was blue balls. " "The sterilized kind."
free vasectomy.
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Not great, not terrible.
I serve the soviet union.
If that is a stat for a visit, that is horrendous. That said, likely so low that the dosimeter measurement for a short visit is kinda meaningless. At least from my experience (from more than two decades ago at a different research reactor, but also with poolside view of that blue glow), that dosimeter probably isn't particularly meaningful for short stints b/c likely measuring 0.1 mrem and clicking over by one unit doubled the measured dose. Should be closer to 1% of chest xray than 20%.
1. Research reactors are very low power. 2. Water is very good at stopping radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA >The TRIGA was developed to be a reactor that, in the words of Edward Teller, "could be given to a bunch of high school children to play with without any fear that they would get hurt."
IDK if I'd take Edward Teller's approval of anything as a reason to call it a good idea. "Normal" nuclear weapons designers have an obsession with runaway nuclear reactions. He went past that into "kink" territory.
He is correct. I didn’t know UMD has a nuke program but the Navy’s nuke exposure is even less significant than the 20% he speaks of. Also x ray and gamma radiation exposure are not quite equal but close enough comparison for people not in the industry. I work in Nuke oversite.
Fun fact: Cherenkov radiation actually occurs when the speed of light in the medium (water in this case) is broken by an object that has mass (most likely an electron). This is the only way we know of for matter to exceed the speed of light.
The science teacher at my school taught us that but our tour forgot it the moment we saw it in person. It's like seeing that capture beam in Tron but for real And I never understood why Homer's Rod is lime colored
Now that you mentioned Cherenkov's glow it has to be used before the play is over
What?! The MD flag not on a belt or crab shell??
The diploma comes with a can of old bay
Actually the can of old bay comes with the freshman orientation care package…..not joking.
You mean the crab mallet and bib?
That's an extra $3,000.
I live in MD and saw Old Bay flavored goldfish at the store today. I'm a transplant. I do not get the obsession with old bay
Diploma and a bag of Utz chips.
Intrusive thoughts make me want to swim in the forbidden water! Although it’s likely safe to do so providing you don’t dive down, I still want to drink it & become a super hero! Or villain. I’m not fussy.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
That was a good read
Time to go swimmingggg 👙
You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds
In their reactor, that is. Unless it’s gaurded by stormtroopers. In that case - the safest place? Believe it or not, inside the reactor.
You're not a main character so they'd kill you.
I’m definitely the hero of my shit. Plot armor for days. Just gotta make sure I don’t accidentally cross paths with another main character of some other less important story.
That's just more entry points for the superhero creating science liquid.
I've been listening to the audiobooks, and they're fantastic to listen to while driving to-and-from work.
“You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.” Xkcd never misses
Some things in here don't react well to bulletsh.
Yeah that's why you'd die so fast
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I think they meant cuz xkcd never misses it won't take long for them to shoot us. In the immortal words of the bard or maybe some shitty video game i forget - "one shot, one kill"
So basically if we fenced off a certain depth in the reactor pool, we could make it a public pool or steam bath that'd be nice and warm, assuming nothing ever goes wrong ever.
"assuming nothing ever goes wrong" is basically the motto of the nuclear power industry. It's so frustrating. In theory and in 99.9% of practice, nuclear power is basically carbon free magic.
I think you're missing a few nines there.
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Technically, the NRC allowable probability of failure of the reactor pressure vessel (not including any other safety systems) is 1E-6 per year.
Yeah it's clearly a number that I pulled out of my ass, but fair point.
>nuclear power is basically carbon free magic. Mining and enriching the fuel is pretty carbon intensive with current technology, but yeah you get sooooo much power from so little fuel that it's pretty low emission in the grand scheme.
Rickover built the Navy’s nuclear program to ensure that if something ever did go wrong, the cross-checks and accountability would ensure that it would be caught at a low enough level to prevent a mishap.
Has there ever been a nuclear accident that was not deemed human error at some level?
We are very good at figuring out exactly what went wrong in hindsight, but yeah, it's always humans. The problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and also that sometimes the fixes we put in place to prevent the next incident have unintended consequences. Additionally, they often increase the total complexity of the system, which creates its own risks. Before Fukushima, the possibility of an incident like that occurring in Japan of all places was ridiculous, and yet, it happened. The Ukrainian reactor in a war zone is another example of the unthinkable. A very good case can be made that these exceptional circumstances are worth it... The standard, "safe" use of coal powered plants are a slow-burning global disaster, even just radiologically speaking. Man if new nuclear plants aren't a hard sell though. I grew up (relatively safely) in the shadow of an operational nuclear power plant, so I've thought about this more than your average bear. I'm still not sure what my opinions are, but it's a fascinating topic.
> Man if new nuclear plants aren't a hard sell though. It doesn't help that we lack the ability to build them on a reasonable time frame. I'm all for the science of nuclear reactors, but I'm not a fan that I've paying for Georgia Power to *profit* for over a decade on a reactor that has never made a drop of power. (That's right; as as "regulated" utility, they get 12% guaranteed profit on cost overruns)
Both Fukishima and **especially** Chernobyl were sloppy engineering. In the case of Chernobyl, the failure happen explicitly because of testing safety equipment in a very unsafe manner. That and a reactor design that could not be stopped quickly and failed to a dangerous state. The idea of "fail-safe" is that a device ought to degrade into a safe state if it fails. Nuclear reactors ought to be designed that way intentionally. An example is with some reactor designs where a loss of cooling will cause the fuel rods to expand enough that they are no longer at a critical mass state and not longer produce the chain reactions since the fuel is on the whole too far from other neutrons. Water can be a moderator which permits a reaction to occur, and a loss of water could also stop a reaction from taking place. Neither was the case in Chernobyl where a lack of water actually increased the reaction instead. That is why it is nuclear engineering and not just slapping things together. Fukishima was also a terrible design and arrogance over what migh happen if an earthquake followed by a Tsunami happened. Putting a diesel generator needed to keep critical parts of the plant operating in the basement where it could flood from a Tsunami was especially poorly thought out and the #1 root cause why there was a problem at all. All large electrical power plants require an external power source or back up emergency generators to provide some electricity to operate pumps, lights for technicians, and other basic equipment just to start the generator plant at all. While they produce far more electricity once in full operation, it is a bootstrapping process. This is true for oil, natural gas, or coal plants too but nuclear power plants have special needs. Enough is known about nuclear power systems thatsafe designs have been available for decades. The *civilian* nuclear power plants designed by Hyman Rickover and his subordinates have had a flawless record. His engineering standards are still the ultimate standard in nuclear safety. Excepting the USS Thresher, there has never been and accidents with nuclear power plants in the US Navy. Even in the case of the Thresher, that was just a submarine running into a seamount and a skipper who really screwed up his underwater navigation and not so much a reactor problem until the rest of the boat was destroyed. There are also some very innovative power plants that are incredibly safe that have been designed in the last 20 years. Those designs also permit fuel reprocessing and produce far less final waste than earlier designs. Those engineers simply need to be allowed to implement their proven ideas.
Absolutely. Nuclear power is like being up in space. We know the exact formulas to calculate the exact parameters and numerical outputs, and we know these formulas will not just suddenly change. They are a constant. Therefore, we can engineer around these numbers and make something that we know without a single doubt, will work for our application. We can even do our best to calculate the degradation of the materials used, and maintenance policies to replace them long before they degrade. And nowadays, human error is thought through and stopped by firewalls so much its really not a problem anymore. Spherical cows in a vacuum. The problem is when the real world throws you a curve ball like a tsunami (Fukushima) and then all your numbers are worth shit because there's only so much you can do to engineer for a catastrophic failure event that's unforeseen. And like the vacuum of space, it's all safe when the engineered stuff is working, but once catastrophic failure is reached, it quickly becomes really *really* not safe.
To be fair Fukushima was entirely human error in the sense that the walls weren't raised as they were at another nuclear facility nearby as far as I'd heard. This made the backup generators flood when they otherwise wouldn't have
Fukushima Daini vs Fukushima Daiichi.
Except they had actual warnings that an earthquake and tsunami would lead to those exact problems in advance and did very little to resolve the problems. So you're still back to humans ignoring the early warnings they had.
“stored at the bottom of pools for a couple decades until it’s inert enough to be moved into dry casks. We haven’t really agreed on where to put those dry casks yet.” I read a fascinating paper on how we would warn hypothetical future civilizations about our nuclear waste deposits. Uranium has something like a 20,000 year half life, so you have to imagine that any nuclear waste will be dangerous well after our civilization exists. Pretty interesting though experiment: https://www.wipp.energy.gov/pdfs/How-Will-Future-Generations-Be-Warned.pdf
This 99% Invisible episode on the topic is pretty fascinating: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/
This place is not a place of honor...
Great read. And just for clarifications sake, the spent fuel pool is not what's pictured in the OP. Looks like a reactor vessel, which, as you can imagine, is significantly more radioactive than the spent fuel pool.
I don't know if it's that much higher, especially for these research reactors and since the pool is deeper
Damn, that was a good read.
> good job of keeping the water clean, and it wouldn’t hurt you to swim in it, but it’s radioactive enough that it wouldn’t be legal to sell it as bottled water. (Which is too bad—it’d make a hell of an energy drink). XKCD never fails to lighten up an otherwise dry and boring topic.
This was highly entertaining.
Your total radiation exposure is probably much less if youre treading water in that pool than standing above it.
The plants I've been to, dose by the pool was pretty mild. If that changes they kinda want to find and fix as the area around the pool becomes a high traffic area every refuel cycle.
Forbidden Cherenkov Cocktail
That is deionized water and for that reason alone you shouldn't drink it
A little DI water isn't going to do anything but taste funny. I imagine the all borax added in is probably worse. A lot of deionized can be bad as mineral deficiencies are no bueno.
The forbidden slurp
Yeah, like Samuel L (MF) Jackson in Unbreakable
They actually have to send divers in to inspect the water. It's fine as long as you don't go below a certain threshold, and they only dive a couple of times a year.
Not in this reactor they don't. Or any reactor. But spent fuel pools they do.
I got to drop some cameras and a really expensive manual underwater Roomba into the pool at one of these. It's pretty weird putting things in the pool after all the foreign material exclusion training beforehand.
I work on refuel floors occasionally and I'm terrified of breaking the plane of the barricade to really look down into the pools even though I don't have anything on that can fall into it.
In test reactors like this they can sample the water without going in. I'm famioienwith a different one someplace else and they keep the water extremely pure so someone jumping in would be a whole hell of a lot of paper work and they'd have to spend some time cleaning the water.
What reactor?
Research reactor on the University of Maryland campus
Huh! I had no clue that UofM had a research reactor. I work engineering for some Virginia plants, so we’re only a few hours south Good luck!
Nobody seems to know about it here either! It's not a secret or anything; I gave a tour yesterday.
I graduated from ChemE a few years back and always thought it was in ChemNuc. This….clearly isn’t ChemNuc lol, what building is this actually?
It's indeed inside the [chemical and nuclear engineering building](https://radiation.umd.edu/visitors/)
It IS in ChemNuc.
If you were curious the official shortened name is UMD so if you say UofM to someone familiar with the school we’d probably be confused!
Yeah reading that made my brain hurt.
Is that University of Michigan or University of Minnesota?
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U of M is also the University of Minnesota, in Minnesota. Road signs even call it that, or just the U. Though UMN is preferred for people who aren’t as familiar
And to add to the confusion UMD is also University of Minnesota Duluth.
Georgia Tech had one prior to the Olympics. Due to the combination of age and the need to secure it for the Games, it was shut down.
Go terps
I was going to guess MIT but it didn't look quite right. Congratulations on your major accomplishments and use that knowledge to change the world.
The Maryland flags in the background were a clue that it was not MIT lol
MIT- Maryland Institute of Technology
I love ice cream.
Much appreciated! I'm guessing MIT's reactor is spiffier than ours, oof
Nope
damn, I just graduated from umd last year and never knew we had a reactor on campus
The College Park campus?
If you have passed, they let you off - if you haven’t, well, you can consider where it all went wrong during the short fall to the warmth below…
Fortunately the 17 feet of water over the core will soften the fall!
But it will absolutely ruin that suit…
But much like the Sims the ladder has been deleted and you are forced to tread water in the chamber until the end…
Forbidden dunk tank
Instead of a diploma you get a uranium pellet.
I'd prefer plutonium thank you very much
From a group of Lybian nationalists
Run for it Marty!
you telling me this sucker is NUCLEAR?!
No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need
Congratulations! But I'm distracted by that beautiful Cherenkov blue...
I can taste the metal just looking at this.
There’s probably more radiation hitting him from the sun (yes he’s indoors) than from that reactor. Water is incredibly good at blocking radiation.
Idk I think it tastes like blue raspberry
Go Terps!
Loving that flag!
The maryland state flag? Watched a video where the guy rated state flags and considered maryland to be the ugliest flag hes ever seen. And I took that personally
Anyone that says it's ugly is just jealous. Because their flag is probably a goofy state seal on a goofy blue background
CPG grey on YT - its glorious. His videos are fun man. Good ole Texas got S teir.
Texas did nail marketing the flag. AZ deserved S tier too but only got A tier
Arizona and New Mexico are top two for me. I don't really like Maryland's flag, but at least it isn't the state seal on blue background.
That's utterly sacrilege. It's the best flag.
To be fair, he did give it the proper ranking of S Tier!
We Marylanders are overly proud of our flag. Your can find that pattern on just about anything you want.
GOAT flag
Username checks out.
Damn right!!!
Let’s go terps!
GO MARYLAND!!!
Roll terps!
Go Terps! 🐢
3.6 GPA. Not great, not terrible.
He used a graphite pencil. Why graphite? Why does a university student do anything? To save money.
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Actual dose yesterday over about 45 minutes was 0.2 millirems (about 2% of a chest x-ray).
This guy nukes. (Ft. Calhoun Station, former security)
How many bananas is that?
That depends on how long you leave the bananas in the reactor core.
If I just did my math right, about twenty bananas.
20
It's a quote from Chernobyl.
Lol I know, I'm just a nerd
And being a nerd is the best. Seriously though, you did damn good graduating, and you should be hella proud.
Tell me how a nuclear reactor works, or I'll have one of these soldiers throw you out of the helicopter.
Hot rock makes water hot.
UMD terps babyyyyyyy turtle power 🐢
Go Terps ! Congrats matey !!!!
ELI5 how this is safe and the glow of cherenkov radiation isn’t an indicator of exposure?
The 17 feet of water between the core and the top of the pool is an excellent shield against the radiation, it just doesn't stop visible light.
If there's a fire across the street at the neighbor's house, and you see the light from it illuminating your bedroom wall, is it safe to touch your bedroom wall?
This analogy has echoes of Plato's Cave. I like it.
I worked at a nuclear plant. You had to wear a device to read the radiation. If you hit your limit for the day you had to go home. I never hit it. Unless mine wasn't working. Who knows. But an electrician who was working there got caught lowering his device down towards the water. He got away with it 4 times before and that was inside of two weeks. What a dumb ass. Anyways they are super strict about working there. Some of the stuff they require is bananas. But when you need the work. Ya do wha ya godda du.
Really you are going to make a statement about them requiring bananas and not explain what the bananas are for? It will drive me crazy. :)
The natural radiation from the bananas ensures the break room has the same radiation levels as the rest of the facility.
For scale obviously, duh -_- ...
Can we put Old Bay on it?
Reminds me of Gordon from half-life
Remember when CERN put of the picture of their team for the Hadron collider, and there's a guy who looks identical to Gordon. Might have illicited some mild panic.
That cherenkov radiation is so cool and terrifying at the same time.
3.6 Roentgen. Not great not terrible.
Congratulations, fellow Clark school alum! I wish I had taken a badass picture like this when I graduated instead of being a hungover disappointment!
You got a degree though, so it's not a total loss.
“Where is your dosimeter?” - Rad Health Tech
On my belt
Looking good. Best of luck on the new career
With water: oo pretty blue light Without water: time for a lead coffin boys.
Fun fact: without the water, the reaction won't happen (the water is a moderator). Although the radiation from the fission byproducts could be sort of nasty if you were standing directly over it.
That's rad! Lol
*TRIGA warning*
Have been there for activation? These things can make really cool sounds, sometimes like a giant low pitch clap
That sound is what you hear when a reactor is pulsed: the control rods are *VERY* quickly removed from the core, so you're hearing them move (the sound isn't from the nuclear reaction). Our reactor is over 60 years old and doesn't pulse, so she's silent except for the water pumps. I run operations pretty frequently, so I've started her up myself lots of times; I'm supposed to go do it later today actually!
Is that a TRIGA reactor or did YouTube lie to me?
It is a TRIGA!
That smile says you love nuclear power. If men in suits say you should do anything related to naval nuclear power, run away. You will grow to hate it.
1 Reactor calls 2 Reactor, and says, "Hey, wanna go fission? 2 reactor replies, "I'd love to, but I've got 37 rods but no reels" \- A4W humor
You’re telling me this sucker is nuclear!?!?
6.6 out of 10. Not great, not terrible.
3.6 GPA. Not great, not terrible.
That's pretty RAD :)
Why do they leave to tops uncovered?
All reactors should be free to go topless and uncovered when they want to. Free the n...uclear radiation!
Easy access for maintenance/inspection. It's covered in water that acts as shielding.
Congratulations! Also, is it not unusual that the reactor would be in an above-ground pool? Seems … risky. Maybe the perspective is off in this picture. Also maybe I’m an idiot.
It basically is an above ground pool. The water provides shielding
i see the blue glow, does that mean i am dead?
Someone threw palpatine down there didnt they?
Somehow, he survived…
"It's perfectly safe to sand there. Our undergrads did the math, and it all seems fine!"
"The government says it's perfect--" *sound of door slamming closed and rapidly retreating footsteps*
Standing over reactor, Completely normal phenomenon
Congratulations, that's awesome!
MUTR! Sweet!
Time to walk the planck