Been a few busy months for me, but i finally got a seat on the B reactor tour, these tours book out within hours of opening day for the whole year. This reactor produced the materal first atom bomb's. My dad said it was still working a bit when he showed up in the late 1960's, but was just about shut down at that point, and still to this day, they have to leave all the water pipes going into the reactor main caps off, just to prove to inspectors that we are not secrectly running water into the old girl and trying to produce. up till the late 1990's it was still checked out by the UN on a regular basis.
The reactor was set up very sensitive with 3 state of the art "at the time" seismograph's, and if it even felt a bump, it would scram the reactor and shut it down. They said a earth quake from over 3 states away made it shut down before.
They even let me sit at the main control center and get a picture
and no, i did not touch the controls " just made it look like i was with a hovering hand..lol The big wall that says, bumping may cause scam, each knob was connected to a reactor rod that controlled some of the flow of water into it, just just bumping it could cause it too shut down. If the reactor was going to melt down, it had huge boron rods that would drop into the reactor from all sides, then it would dump boron marbles into it too finish the job, that would kill over 80% of the reaction and contain the melt down, but ruin the reactor for all time. B reactor performed flawlessly and had a great saftey record for the time, yup dirty nasty stuff, but they was doing there best to make sure it would not go into melt down.
Great tour thou, and it is free if you can book it soon as they open the bookings, they are trying to make it so you can drive out at any time and tour the reactor when ever you want " with out regulations" maybe in a year or 2. got many more pics ill post soon..so much to shoot and see there, i really wanted to take that 1950's tracked robot arm for a drive, got too love the controller!!
The reactor was set up very sensitive with 3 state of the art "at the time" seismograph's, and if it even felt a bump, it would scram the reactor and shut it down. They said a earth quake from over 3 states away made it shut down before.
They even let me sit at the main control center and get a picture
and no, i did not touch the controls " just made it look like i was with a hovering hand..lol The big wall that says, bumping may cause scam, each knob was connected to a reactor rod that controlled some of the flow of water into it, just just bumping it could cause it too shut down. If the reactor was going to melt down, it had huge boron rods that would drop into the reactor from all sides, then it would dump boron marbles into it too finish the job, that would kill over 80% of the reaction and contain the melt down, but ruin the reactor for all time. B reactor performed flawlessly and had a great saftey record for the time, yup dirty nasty stuff, but they was doing there best to make sure it would not go into melt down.Great tour thou, and it is free if you can book it soon as they open the bookings, they are trying to make it so you can drive out at any time and tour the reactor when ever you want " with out regulations" maybe in a year or 2. got many more pics ill post soon..so much to shoot and see there, i really wanted to take that 1950's tracked robot arm for a drive, got too love the controller!!
