Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/10/heres-what-a-nuclear-reactor.html
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Holy cow what is going on there, is that…on purpose? I used to be OK with the idea of nuclear power but after watching the Chernobyl series I think I changed my mind
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It’s a TRIGA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA ; it’s a research and training design built around uranium zirconium hydride fuel, which becomes nonreactive when hot. A high output pulse is one of its party tricks.
Tom Scott did a video about Reed College’s:
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I was starting to wonder why the vid blacked out, but then it dawned on me. The camera would have been fried otherwise. Not many people seem to remember this, but this was my 15th birthday present and I remember it very well. Man landed on the moon and we got to watch. It was glorious, riveting stuff for me. And suddenly the feed was lost. The astronauts tried the ever useful engineer’s trick of hitting it on its left side. To no avail. It was quickly discovered that when they tried to reposition the camera, they had accidentally pointed it at the sun for a sec. Presto! Fried camera.
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Not in this case. It’s a very small reactor with a crapton of water on top of it. Neither the camera nor the photographer were subjected to a radiation hazard.
Now, if you dove into the pool and sat next to it while they fired the thing up…
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I think you’ll find it’s because they turned the lights off… 
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Oh, I get that. It’s just that at least they knew there was going to be a blinding light and protected the camera much like you wear a visor when welding.
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I was thinking, what would happen if the guy filming dropped his phone. Also thinking, seriously, they have a view into the core? It’s just in a big pool of water like that?
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Research reactors are frequently built like that - it allows passive cooling and it’s safest possible design when the reactor doesn’t have to produce energy.
I’ve been on a tour of such reactor once (20 or 30 MW thermal power), it’s really cool to stand above the reactor core and cooling pool and see Cherenkov radiation in person 
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I read a book on Nuclear Accidents. It was amazing how really weird things, like the shape of a bend in a pipe, or the parabola of the vortex caused by water in a centrifuge, can focus sufficient fissile material to create enough radiation to kill someone. The bit that really gave me the shivers was the infamous accident at Whitesands, where the scientists froze in place after a release of energy and drew around their feet with chalk. They then took a tape measure, and measured how far they were each away from the reaction, to worked out who was going to die. 
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RMBK reactors were ill-conceived from the start and comparing them to a modern nuclear reactor is like comparing a brazier on a pogo stick to a pressure cooker.
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Thanks for the link - that’s seriously cool. My favourite quote;
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.”
I clearly went to the wrong high school.
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I love your simile but it can be improved by carrying through the hot water element, e.g.:
“… like comparing a hotpot on a pogo stick to a pressure cooker.”
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There are a bunch of them in universities, where the freshmen are just out of high school, so…yeah.
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Thanks, I wasn’t 100% convinced myself !
Let’s make a little contest, shall we ? I will send my 2020 new year card to the author of the best RMBK/modern reactor simile ! The more liked comment win.
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Sigh… I have very happy memories of finally being old enough (13!) to visit AECL and get a tour of NRU (and yes, see the blue glow)
and Ontario Hydro’s NPD station (where the blue glow was in the spent fuel bay, and fuel bundles are way heavier than you expect them to be).
https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/history/npd/npd.html
My tour guide thought it would be fun to press the “all hell is breaking loose” alarm test button in the control room without telling the shift supervisor. Not as funny as you might think. Fun fact: the turbine had thrust bearings because it was a re-purposed ship turbine (that place was built on a deadline).
… of course, when you think about it … I suppose 13 year olds wouldn’t be let into nuclear reactor control rooms these days. Happier times 
I suppose.
I get to tease my Dad that his old workplace is now a historic site, plaque and everything.
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Is that the reactor that Jimmy Carter helped to clean up during his time in the Navy?
edited to add: Google is your friend. Carter worked on the NRX rather than the NRU at Chalk River.
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Here’s what a nuclear reactor starting up doesn’t look like.
LS. Calder Hall steelworks. Various shots of Queen Elizabeth II pressing a release switch which formally links the Workington steelworks with the National Grid and thus makes it the first atom powered steelworks. Queen watching Bessemer furnace in action. Molten metal dripping, sparks, fire, Queen with official showing her around. Various shots of the Queen watching the rolling of a steel rail and the steel rail. Workers looking on.
The Calder Hall reactor had been supplying power for a week or so at that point. But a photo opportunity with the Queen was good PR, nuking her wasn’t.
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NB there are a lot more of these little TRIGA research reactors out there than people realize. There used to be one 1/2 mile from my elementary school and there is one at the local university just down the road from me.
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you are describing Apollo 12, and Alan Bean during the moon walk did accidentally fry the color tv camera with the direct sun.
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