Vol. 38, No. 18

3-14-2007
By: Adam King

Powerful ally

OSU's nuclear reactor a boon for wide spectrum of research

The nondescript building on West Campus tucked several hundred feet back from Kinnear Road looks more like a storage facility than the home to a nuclear reactor.

The university isn’t trying to hide it. In fact, Ohio State is quite proud of its existence.

It’s the only research reactor in Ohio and one of 23 maintained at universities around the country, down from about 60. There used to be reactors at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, one near Sandusky in a high-power facility and one down the road at Battelle, but those all have been shut down.

“The disappearances have been a combination of things,” said Andrew Kauffman, associate director of the Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. “But it’s been negative perception about nuclear energy more than anything else.”

The university has tried to change perception about nuclear power since the reactor opened in 1961 at the tail end of President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program, which moved nuclear technology from the military into the civilian sector and established the still-active International Atomic Energy Agency.

Used primarily for research and testing, the reactor also is a teaching tool, not only for Ohio State students but hundreds of high school students who tour the facility every year.

“That’s very important for generating interest in nuclear engineering,” Kauffman said. “Right now I believe the average age in the industry is 50, so a lot of people are going to be retiring in five to 10 years. I’ve read it’s about 30 percent of the workforce. So we have to train people for those positions.”

Three full-time and two part-time staff, funded partly by the College of Engineering and the rest by research dollars, manage the reactor. It’s a nonpower system in a controlled environment, meaning the energy can be manipulated easily. By contrast, power plants have power reactors that run at 100 percent all the time and reach hundreds of degrees. The university’s reactor almost never breaches room temperature and can be shut down when not in use.

It’s completely safe, says senior research associate Joe Talnagi, who has worked at the lab for 27 years, not only because of its small stature but also due to its 6-foot-thick concrete housing.

“Is radiation safe? Sure it is in the hands of somebody who’s trained to handle it. So the idea is to be educated in what you are doing and have some sense of respect for what you’re doing,” Talnagi said. “We spend about 40 hours a week in here and feel very safe.”

On the tour, visitors are able to climb steps to the top of the 20-foot-high housing and look down at the reactor, which can be seen through thousands of gallons of perfectly clear water used to maintain its temperature. When the lights are shut off, photons emitted as a result of the reactor’s radiation make the surrounding water glow an incandescent blue.

Talnagi then shows visitors one of the most common uses for the reactor — neutron activation analysis. He irradiates a small piece of aluminum and lets guests measure the radioactivity, which only lasts for about two minutes. Depending on the element and its size, radioactivity can last for nanoseconds or billions of years, Kauffman said. Researchers use this analysis to determine an object’s element compounds and see how it impacts the environment. “The reactor provides a capability that’s kind of unique,” Talnagi said. “You can teach students about this particular area of technology in a real-world manner instead of just studying out of a book or doing a computer simulation. To generate new knowledge, sometimes you have to get into a lab and do experiments.”

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