{"id":8068,"date":"2011-07-27T16:37:19","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T20:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=8068"},"modified":"2011-07-27T16:37:19","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T20:37:19","slug":"six-decades-of-atom-smashing-at-nc-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/news\/2011\/07\/27\/six-decades-of-atom-smashing-at-nc-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Decades of Atom-Smashing at NC State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raleigh\u2019s \u201cFirst Temple of the Atom\u201d sprang a leak in July.<\/p>\n

North Carolina State University\u2019s nuclear reactor made the national news when the university announced the pool cooling the reactor core had begun leaking.<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s nuclear engineering and research program has been making news of one sort or another ever since the 1950s, when NC State became the first university after World War II to operate an on-campus nuclear reactor.<\/p>\n

The current PULSTAR reactor, which became operational in 1972, is the fourth the university has built. It\u2019s one of more than 20 college reactors operating around the country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Roger Winstead<\/p><\/div>\n

The PULSTAR functions as a teaching tool for nuclear engineers and also as a radiation source for experiments at the Burlington Nuclear Laboratory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reactor can perform all the tasks of other reactors, but has the added advantage of enhanced radiation intensity,\u201d Ayman Hawari, director of NC state\u2019s nuclear reactor program, told the Record. \u201cFor educational applications, it can demo some important reactor-physics concepts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PULSTAR reactor pool sprung a previous leak in the 1990s. Despite high radiation around the leak, the university successfully completed underwater repairs.<\/p>\n

In the more recent incident, 10 gallons of water per hour drained out of the 15,000 gallon coolant pool before the university sealed the leak. University News Director Keith Nichols said a total 3,500 gallons leaked out before a repair crew located and patched the weak spot July 13.<\/p>\n

Joey Ledford, a public affairs officer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission<\/a>, said that two small leaks in 20 years isn\u2019t anything that worries the NRC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not unusual to have leaks on occasion \u2026 We consider it a small leak to begin with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The reactor runs around 20 hours per week or 1,000 hours a year. Hawari said the PULSTAR is now online and operating normally again.<\/p>\n

Smashing Atoms for School Credit<\/strong>
\nThe program began in 1950, when the college recruited Clifford Beck from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to oversee the creation of the original reactor. Nuclear enthusiasm ran high in the 1950s: boosters predicted atomic power would generate energy too cheap to measure and even vacuum cleaners would run on nuclear energy.<\/p>\n

Read More:<\/strong> History of NCSU Nuclear Engineering Program<\/a><\/p>\n

As recorded in the university\u2019s archives, the 10-kilowatt reactor soon developed corrosion-related fuel leaks, forcing the university to replace it. In 1956, the university upgraded to a more powerful model that would eventually generate 250 kilowatts.<\/p>\n

In 1972, NC State changed reactors again, installing the 1-megawatt \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The PULSTAR name refers to the reactor\u2019s ability to produce short pulses of intense radiation by going \u201csafely supercritical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawari said it\u2019s safe because the PULSTAR\u2019s fuel type and the physics of its design counteract the power and temperature surge when it goes supercritical<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s website lists some of the PULSTAR\u2019s research uses:<\/p>\n

\u2022Neutron Activation Analysis. By bombarding biological, industrial or geologic samples with a beam of neutrons, researchers can detect 65 different elements at the parts-per-billion concentration level.<\/p>\n

\u2022Neutron radiography, which can reveal the interior of objects in more detail than an X-ray.<\/p>\n

\u2022Experiments on \u201cultra-cold\u201d neutrons which display unusual physical properties because they\u2019ve been chilled and slowed down.<\/p>\n

The state government puts up around $500,000 a year toward the cost of running the reactor, Hawari said. The program also receives around $1 million a year in research funding, mostly from the federal government. In FY 2010, the federal Department of Energy gave NC State a $1.37 million grant to boost PULSTAR\u201ds power output up to two megawatts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reactor is too small to be used in energy generation,\u201d Hawari said. \u201cTypical electricity-producing reactors are 3,000 times larger than the PULSTAR. The increase in power to two megawatts would allow us to double the intensity of radiation emitted by the core, which would enhance its use in research and science.\u201d<\/p>\n

The smallest power-generating nuclear plant in the United States generates 478 megawatts.<\/p>\n

In addition to research, NC State has been training nuclear engineers since the 1950s, and opened a full nuclear engineering department in 1963.<\/p>\n

U.S. News & World rated the university\u2019s nuclear engineering program seventh best in the country in its 2010 college rankings. The program also offers online virtual classes for students outside the area, some of whom study the PULSTAR through the Internet from as far away as Jordan\u2019s University for Science and Technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent leak from NC State\u2019s nuclear reactor isn\u2019t the first time the reactor has made headlines. The reactor has done that several times since 1953, when NC State became the first campus since World War II to have its own nuclear reactor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24028,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}