Ear on Chicago; Argonne National Lab

The sound of that door closing in the room which leads into the research reactor at Argon National Lab. And this is Hugh Hill speaking to tell you the story of the research reactor. Last week you heard about the experimental boiling water reactor. This week the story of the reactor they use only for research. Now we've gone through one door, you heard it close and now we're walking across the room. You can probably hear the hollow sound in here and we push the button and this door opens to reveal the research reactor through a quarter down about 50 feet away. We're going to talk to Ray Meshky. Ray close that door again for us, would you? Push the button and here comes the door. Once again we're enclosed with both doors closed. Ray tell us about this room. The purpose of the airlock here is to create

or is to enclose a negative pressure with respect to the outside atmosphere in the building shell. The negative pressure allows a constant flow of air into the building rather than the danger of a potential contamination leaking out. I understand you're going to demonstrate that for us by a rush of air. He's going to open what is called here at emergency exit only. Push that sound, that's the vibration of the air coming in. Now this air is coming in. Oh yes, I can feel it coming through the crack in this door. The other side of the emergency exit is open now. Now what actually happened, we had both security doors closed and Ray slightly cracked a door here called emergency exit only and the sound you heard was that of air coming into the room and as I put my hand up by the crack in the door you could actually feel the air coming in. All right, let's go on into the reactor room itself.

We have arrived in the reactor room Ray and I just at the time when an experiment is about to be put underway. Howard Vogel is standing right in front of me here. Howard wearing one of his white cover all jackets in the reactor room. He's ready to push a button and we're going to listen. What you're doing Howard? It's opening a bore -out shutter which exposes the mice to slow new crimes. A moment ago one of Howard's assistants put a tray of white mice into the unit. Howard has been working with this experiment for quite a long while

because about a year or so ago we came out and talked to him about it. It's shut off now Howard. The shutter is now fully open and we're pushing the button that controls the mice going into the exposure. It takes the mice about 10 seconds actually to travel into the beam. And as soon as there it is something happened the lights came in here some clicks. Boron carbide counters that are counting the neutron exposures in the reactor. What's next? Well the mice are now in for about 20 minutes. Can you tell me about how much your radiation are going to get? They're being exposed now to about eight rads of fast new trans per minute. What will happen to the mice? Well these particular animals are being exposed in a recovery experiment. They're getting a single dose and then a 10 -day interval and then they'll be exposed to second

time to the same dose. We'll study how much of the first dose is recovered in order to find out something about recovery after fast neutron exposure. I think it was about a year ago. Wasn't it Howard when we were out here before and you were working with the mice? Yes. This program has actually been underway for about five years. We've been exposing all sorts of organisms to fast new trans and cobalt 60 gamma rays. What if any major development have you discovered out here from your work? Well there have been many but I was thinking of picking out one or two high points. Well our major objective is to try and understand a little bit more about the biological effects of these two ionizing radiations. Fast new trans and gamma rays are always present around any atomic installation and we're trying to find out something about

their biological effects. One of the major things we've been trying to understand is what causes death in various mammals when exposed whole body to these radiations. We have found out for instance that the two most sensitive systems to the radiations are the gastrointestinal and the blood forming systems. Would this also be true in humans? This would be true of mammals in general including man. Yes. Well thank you very much Howard. Once again it's a pleasure to talk to you. This is extremely interesting over here. The way that you people are actually carrying out these experiments with this reactor and as I said we

were here not too long ago and it's been going on for some time but this continually amazes me when I see the work that is carried out with this atomic reactor here. It's wonderful work indeed and it certainly shows how argon is pushing forward the study of atomic energy. Thanks for talking to us. Thank you. Just a few feet away from where Howard is working with the white mice. We have come to a location where an overhead crane is being put into operation and moving a heavy slab of steel. It'll be placed down here right in front of us. What's going on here Ray? Well this tank of water is a shielding demonstration facility for the International School of Nuclear Science and Engineering. By placing the shielding blocks in various positions in the tank and by moving a counting circuit back and forth in the water they can demonstrate the

varying shield effectiveness of this material. Is that the tank of water right there in front of us? That's right. While Ray and I are talking allow me to briefly describe the action here. This is a circular room and this overhead crane operates on the circle high above us. It is spinning and the crane is moving back and forth at the same time. The huge steel girders were spinning in a 360 degree basis and now moving the huge slab of steel over into place. At that point the crane moves back and forth and now the slab of steel is just above us. They're about ready to move it down near that swimming pool. I'll call it a swimming pool. It's a tank of water. You'll hear the crane in a minute I think. Just a very light click. Crane has the slab of steel hooked onto its two hooks.

Hooks attach to large link chains and then onto the cable and the windshup above. They move to slab over here on which one of the workers is standing now and laid it down flat. It was an orange or sort of a rust colored slab and this one is a gray one. They're moving it down into the water as a sort of shield. Now Ray if you don't mind what I'd like to do in order to demonstrate the experiments which are carried on here is to take a walk around this reactor. The reactor is set right in the middle of the room. The room as I said was circular and the reactor is right in the center of the room. Around the reactor are a number of experiments. We've seen the one with white mice. We've seen here how they're using slabs of steel for shielding purposes and now we're going to move around a little way and take a look at some of the other things that are going on here in the reactor room. Is this a gagger counter right down here? No that's nearly a Simpson

meter. This is the counting circuit which is placed in the tank. Now this as Ray explained a little while ago is merely sort of a classroom demonstration so we're going to pass that one up and move out of the next one. What goes on here? This study is a neutron diffraction spectrometer. It's a basic study in the crystal structure of materials. It's carried on here by our metallurgy division. How does it work? Well these people have a columnator within the reactor so they get a very fine slit of neutrons emerging from the reactor. All right Ray let's move on around to the right. We're moving in a counterclockwise motion I keep saying to the right because actually that's the way we're moving but when you're in a circle it's hardly likely that you'd say right or left. We're moving counterclockwise around the room and now we've stopped at another experiment Ray what goes on here? Well this is a thermal column face of the reactor. This is used as a good source of thermal neutrons that is neutrons of a fairly

low energy. This apparatus here is a slow chopper. As the neutrons emerge from the reactor they go through a slit in a rotating wheel and then pass through sample material which the experimenter has placed in the neutron beam. Is that one of the wheels that he's placing in a position there now? This is sample material. These samples are organic materials they are trying to determine the slow neutron cross sections of these materials. All right Ray as I said we probably wouldn't understand the experiments that are being carried out but Ray's description of them will give us an idea of how many things are really done here. There's another clicking machine over here. Yeah we can let's go under. Going under a long tube here and moving over closer to this counter so that we can hear it. Hold on. Now that's merely a counter all the

way up to 52 ,089 -1991 and all the way up. What is this? This is a fast neutron chopper or a neutron time -of -flight study. These people have a rotor which is used to interrupt the neutron beam. There's a small slit in the rotor as the slit lines up with the reactor a burst of neutrons comes through it. Then they pass the neutrons they get this way through sample material and through the long tube. The tube is 60 meters in length, carries the neutrons out to a detector station at the 60 meter point. The clicks you hear here are the counts coming back into this apparatus. This is a memory device storing up the information for the experimenter. What about all of this machinery over here, right? We don't have to go all the way over there. Well these are other experiments. As you can see we're rather crowded for space. Our building is 70 feet in diameter. Our reactor is 20 feet in diameter.

The space between the wall of the building and the reactor is really not sufficient. Well I think we've described enough experiments to give us an idea of what is done here and I'd like to talk briefly now about the reactor itself, right? What kind is it? Well it is a heavy water moderated and cooled uranium fuel reactor. You know talking to you Ray and listening to you describe what's going on here. You'll move with such ease through these words. Words that are completely unfamiliar to me and I'm strange to think that not too many years ago this was no science at all. People didn't even dream of it. Atomic science is not very old is it? No it isn't very old. It's made great strides in a short life. We hope it'll make a few greater strides in the future. Ray and I have come up now to the control room of this reactor. It's up on the, well it's just off the catwalk and

as we call it the second floor except that it's really not a floor in itself it's just a part of an offshoot of the catwalk here. Now Ray I'm sitting at the operator's chair and the reactor is operating at the present time. The operator is not operating because I guess there isn't much he has to do is there while it's going. Well the reactor is operating entirely automatically. Our present power level is two megawatts and you know the arrow flashing there that's the regulating rod driving in to compensate for loss in power. The control of the reactor is accurate to within one half of one percent. You know last week we were over at the experimental boiling water reactor Ray and we were in the control room and we looked at the dials and they were explained to us by Joe Herrer and I want to mention first of all that there are a number of dials in here but I don't see any reason to go through a complete explanation because once again I must say that we

wouldn't understand it anyway but I would just like to point out that again here in the control room there are a large number of gauges and dials and buttons some red and some black that they use to either start up the reactor or control it while it's going. If I said everything properly that's exactly right. The only thing that I recognize in here is the clock up here that tells the time of the day and I don't even recognize that because it's calibrated differently than regular and normal clocks. It's merely 24 hour clock it's a little more convenient to tell time in that fashion when you have to pull samples at all hours and night. I see. Well now Ray what I'd like to do is leave the control room and walk just a short ways and go out there to the reactor itself. Again may I say that we're in a large circular room and around the room is this catwalk and from the catwalk leading out to the reactor is a little area way and we're going to walk out that and we'll talk to you from the top of the reactor itself. Ray and I have now walked across the

catwalk and over here to the top of the atomic reactor. Ray is it not dangerous up here? No there's adequate shielding on top of the reactor so we don't have to worry about any radiation level. Now this is a round reactor or at least well it's not exactly round. Octagonical is that or octagon? Octagon. It's at it. As you can tell I'm not a mathematician. I don't know those terms but anyway they have eight sides to it and right in the center are a number of holes which have caps on them, steel caps. What are those? 17 of those holes hold fuel elements and sample facilities. The balance are merely sample facilities. Ray means sample facilities so that you can put something down into the reactor. That's right we insert samples directly down those holes into the core region of the reactor for our radiations. What would you put down there? Would you put food for example to radiate food? No we don't ordinarily irradiate food here. We produce radioisotopes by inserting samples in these chambers and then you work with the isotopes

as part of your experiment. While the experimenters who send us the material do yes. Well who sends you the material? Companies? Some commercial concern send us material. Most of our work here is done by people at Argonne from various divisions. Ray this is called CP5 that means Chicago pile 5. Where were the first four? Well the first reactor of course was at Stagfield and it was Fermi's reactor. That was later dismantled and reconstructed as CP2 and was placed in operation at the Payless Park site. Then we built a heavy water reactor at Payless Park which we called CP3. The 4 CP4 is a reactor which was built in Idaho and this became CP5. I understand that you actually have a part Fermi's CP2 is number is second

pile here in fact right over here in the office. That's right. We cut up some sections of the graphite just to use as demonstration pieces, museum pieces essentially. Well Ray thanks a million for telling us about the experiments and the reactor here in the research reactor building. We're going to have to go now. Our time is running out and we still have to talk to Dr. Hilberry. So you want to thank you for taking the tour with us and telling us about the research reactor. It's been a pleasure you. We've come back to the office of Dr. Norman Hilberry, the director of Argonne Lab. Last week Dr. Hilberry we came in and talked about the experimental boiling water reactor. This week we had the pleasure of going through the research reactor and I'm sure that you're learning quite a good deal from it. What is the basic purpose of continuing work with the research reactor? Well the research reactor is your future because it is from the research reactor that you get the

scientific information on what your future is going to depend. Just exactly like a bank you can't withdraw anything from the bank that you haven't saved or produced. Basic science is still the cornerstone that our future must depend on. What you do is develop your basic understandings of the world you're living in. This you do with a research reactor. Some future date then you've got some information deposited in your bank of knowledge that you can draw on to produce the direct applied things which raise your standard of living, make life more comfortable if you will or at least keep the same level of comfort moving on into the future, which after all our

resources are not infinite and one must be laying plans now for what you're going to have. You know we could be out here for a week I suppose telling stories that occur out at Argonne the experimental boiling water reactor the research reactor we haven't even talked about the school that you have here where you teach students from foreign countries and give them information about atomic research. Is America outstripping everybody in this peaceful use of the atomic energy? Well we hope we're in the lead but remember there's just one basic fact. Good old mother nature doesn't care who asks her a question. If the proper question is asked she will give the answer regardless of race or creed or anything else. We do not have,

we are not producing scientists, engineers at the rate of which there being produced in some other sections of the world. This means that in the decades ahead we are not going to have as many people to ask the proper questions of mother nature as some other parts of the world will have. And it isn't a matter that we have preeminence and ability to ask questions. All it takes is human intelligence and this comes in all sorts of packages and one must remember we have no final rights on mother nature. She is perfectly willing to answer each and every one alike so that I think we have the lead if we're going to maintain this lead

it's important that folks who are interested in science and engineering go ahead with this business so that our staff of people within the United States remains at a level which is requisite to keep us in the lead. Dr. Hillberry once again may I thank you for allowing us to come out and telling the two part story one on the experimental boiling water reactor and today on the research reactor it's been a pleasure indeed. Thank you very glad that you could be here. And that's the story of our God's research reactor and this is Hugh Hill speaking.