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A glowing photo
By adamg on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 9:43pm
Sure, the South End will soon have some of the world's deadliest pathogens, but only Cambridge has an urban nuclear reactor.
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Comments
Fusion is better
Fission? Hah! MIT has a Tokamak fusion reactor. One of about 4 in North America.
It draws its power from a flywheel the size of a small building.
It uses more power in a 2 second run than Cambridge uses in a day.
You call that a reactor? This here's a reactor
What about Harvard's power plant in Mission Hill, is that Newclear?
Diesel
History. Produces electricity, steam and, my favorite, chilled water.
No it's not
It's not the only urban reactor, UMass Lowell also has a test nuclear reactor for use in their nuclear engineering program. Locally it's known as the BRT (Big Round Thing, as in "What's that big round thing?").
UML and MIT
I'm an alumna of both institutions.
UML and MIT reactors are the two largest in the country.
MIT runs theirs on highly-enriched uranium, which is notable for the easy use as weapons grade material. UML ran on that same stuff, but they converted to LEU some time ago.
But universities have really crappy security outside the buildings - I have photographed tanker trucks idling right next to the UML containment (like, a sidewalk away). MIT has an active rail line in back of their reactor.
I know folks who filed NRC petitions to get MIT to shut theirs down during the DNC a couple of years ago, but the NRC didn't think it necessary even though the facility was well known, using HEU, and less than one air mile from the Fleet Center. Talk about a terror target (even though an attack was unlikely to be very successful, the scare factor would be sufficient motivation).