Tomshine Photo Gallery: Old Photo Server

More photos of the core...

When the reactor is operating at a high power level, the core glows with a blue light. This is called Cherenkov radiation, and is the result of electrons traveling faster than the speed of light in water (which is slower than light travels in air).

The Cherenkov radiation is not that bright, and when the camera's flash is turned on it is almost impossible to see.

More photos of the core...

This is the UWNR pool, from the core at the bottom to near the surface. The water is about 27 feet deep.

This is the structure that holds up the reactor core. Even though the core is 27 feet underwater near the bottom of the pool, it is supported by long aluminum poles, and hangs from this "bridge" structure.

Yes, the reactor is made by General Electric.

The reactor is controled from the large green console. Today, Steve and a student bring the reactor to full power, 1 megawatt.

All of the reactor's fuel elements are tracked on this board. Actually, there is another similar board above the reactor pool which is the "master", this one in the control room is secondary.

This picture was taken as the reactor underwent a pulse. For a very brief period (just a few milliseconds), the power of the reactor rises to almost a gigawatt, nearly a thousand times higher than it's normal power. The intensity of the Cherenkov radiation rises as well.

After the pulse the power drops off sharply. Only a few seconds after initiating the pulse it is nearly impossible to see the Cherenkov radiation.

This is the reactor containment structure that holds the pool and the reactor itself.

The demineralizer removes ions from the reactor water. The ions come from corosion of metal that is in contact with the water. Removing them is necessary to keep down radioactivity in the pool (since metal ions activate more readily than does water).

These are the largest pumps in the reactor lab. The larger one on the left pumps secondary cooling water to the cooling tower on top of the mechanical engineering building. The smaller one to the right pumps secondary cooling water through the heat exchanger where it picks up heat from the primary (pool) water. Both have a flow rate of about 1000 gallons per minute.