Why nuclear reactors and cold medicine don't mix

7/20/2010 11:47 AM EDT

Was society really that ignorant back then or did we as a whole just not consider such potentially deadly consequences to be serious? Changing the subject - The idea of using a toy train as the method for moving samples in and out of the reactor is pretty funny and a great example of innovative thinking. They could have spent gobs of money making a conveyor system of linear actuator driven platform. Instead they just called on Lionel!

7/20/2010 5:34 PM EDT

It always comes down to the human factor. Given the times (well before me - maybe..) consider that most people did not even think about having a few drinks and driving. Fast forward to today and compare with our current awareness of drugs including alcohol, it is hard to imagine things the way they were. I also love the toy train! What a great, practical method to move small loads around. Today we would have indeed required a specialized device, with specifications that carried a $100K or more price tag; taken years to test, approve, and roll-out (pun intended). Progress?

7/22/2010 7:49 PM EDT

Society was not so much ignorant as it was reluctant to escalate a situation. Today, every questionable action is elevated to require review by "trained professionals". Are you speeding? Pay a fine _and_ go to class. Did your gun go off in the backyard? That alone is now illegal (it was always illegal to shoot someone, so no change there, and yes, falling bullets are dangerous). Did you get angry with your teenager? Go to counseling and possibly go to jail. Ditto for drunk on the job. A great section of our big government now focuses on, and praises themselves for, raising any non-conformance to become a legal situation and finding a "law" over which you might be (metaphorically) cained.

7/23/2010 11:26 PM EDT

This story simply cannot be true. The Graphite Pile was loaded with uranium when it was fueled. There were no "reaction rods" to insert. Reactor operation was initiated by withdrawing neutron-absorbing control rods. Withdrawing all the control rods would produce a rapid exponential increase in neutron production (and reactor power!) and would produce an automatic reactor "scram" in very short order, not a "steady, powerful, and even" power state. And you betcha the folks at ORNL understood the dangers of improper reactor operation, even way back in the 40's and 50's. You can also depend on the reliable operation of the reactor safeguards at the X-10 pile, even back then. The reactor operators I knew personally took a great deal of pride in their jobs, and would never drink on the job. There are some pretty good true stories about Oak Ridge and things that happened there, but this one is beyond the pale!

7/24/2010 11:49 AM EDT

As for the train, I would weld the track and make sure that the sample car attached to the engine could not come loose or dump it's contents, then I would attach a cable to the front of the engine and the rear of of the sample car. If worst came to worst, the train could simply be pulled out. I'm sure that something similar was used.

As for the truth of the story, this was the way it was told to me. If you have stories of the the doings at X 10, share them with us.

7/24/2010 2:42 PM EDT

I agree with RDyer that the story cannot be true. I wonder as to the motivation of the author in seeking more "...stories of the doings at X 10..." when this one was so obviously fabricated by his source. Just what we need now are more anti-nuclear scare stories. Modern reactor designs are safe and way overdue for wide use here in the United States.

Please, EE Times, check your authors work (and sources) before publishing. Even a cursory search on the ORNL and X-10 turns up enough information to show that what Mr. Radcliffe wrote needs to be labeled as entertainment or fiction, not mislabeled as among the "Ultimate Screw-ups". Unless, that is, the intention was to besmirch the memory of the people and corrupt the history of what ORNL contributed to this nation's defense over the years.

7/25/2010 5:32 PM EDT

First, using a toy electric train is certainly an interesting way to do it. So let us not play the "but what if" game. I will hold my comments about that game because this is a civil group of professionals.
Second, independant of any information about the reactor construction, it does not seem reasonable that a reactor running at an actual "full bore" setting would be stable. My thinking is that it would be heading toward an uncontrolled explosion. BUT I can see the possibility of a reactor being run at some maximum preset limit, a stable point where there was not much margin left. I do wonder about how the electric train parts would behave in an intense radioactive environment, because they did use some inexpensive materials. So my guess is that there is actually a whole lot more to the story, or else it was one of those stories created to find out about leaks in security. They did that a bit back then. Sometimes it was done to lead others astray. Consider the story about carrots that was spread when the Allied Forces first started using radar.

7/25/2010 10:26 PM EDT

The model train story is highly suspect. The Graphite Reactor is a cube of carbon 24 feet on a side, with some 1248 square channels through it. It is shielded by high-density concrete walls seven feet thick. Technicians standing outside the reactor can push small aluminum cans of uranium fuel or other materials into the reactor with long rods. Look at the pictures and read the history here at http://www.ornl.gov/info/swords/swords.shtml

The holes are too small for the train, in the first place, only about two inches across. The reactor face is pretty far off the ground in the second place. And if you could get a toy train to run into and out of the reactor, you wouldn't want to do it; here's why:

The reason you want to irradiate a sample in a nuclear reactor is neutron activation. The neutrons get absorbed by atomic nuclei in the sample material and the sample becomes radioactive. Then you can detect the radiation, and by energy spectroscopy and comparison with extensive experimental data, you can determine the species and percentages of the atoms in your sample.

Putting a model train (or any other metal object) into even a relatively low-flux reactor like the X-10 pile, even for a fairly short time, would make it "hot as a pistol" so you sure wouldn't want to run it back to your work station to retrieve your sample. You'd probably want your sample in a lead-shielded cask for radiation safety, not out in the open or in your pocket.

The graphite pile reactor was the first successful reactor design, but they don't build 'em like that any more. However, there is one notable graphite reactor that made the news a few years ago, when the operators did just what our story describes: after a low-power run, the operators pulled all the control rods out to allow a rapid power build-up - "all the power they could get" - and they got it. That reactor was in the Ukraine, at Chernobyl!

7/28/2010 12:29 AM EDT

I can't vouch for the veracity of the story, but the author (fabricator?) did say that the toy train was used for moving the samples to be irradiated in and out of the reactor, not for the fuel or control rods. If the train were to break down, I suppose the samples would be lost, along with the ability to irradiate more samples, but the safety of the reactor would not be compromised, assuming the means for inserting neutron absorbing or for removing fuel rods were suitably reliable and/or redundant. I'd have sworn somebody commented about the reliability of a toy train for moving fuel or control rods in and out, and that's why I commented, but maybe it was pulled?

7/28/2010 3:45 AM EDT

So are new reactors today still built with toy railroad tracks going into them? Did the train's whistle still work? Are the toy trains the reason nuclear power plants hired engineers? I remember Good 'N Plenty Candies were advertised as being needed to "make my train run." Did they have a lot of Good 'N Plenty on hand at this power plant? Oh, that's right, they used codeine and booze.

7/28/2010 10:35 AM EDT

Using a toy train was a short cut, as was lax safety procedures. Short cuts were needed during World War II. It is unfortunate that many such short cuts remained in the '50s and even the 60's. Do not confuse this with the civilian nuclear industry.

8/3/2010 10:09 AM EDT

The graphite pile reactor at X-10 was designed and built by physicists, who think differently from engineers. The reason that nobody in the West uses graphite pile reactors is an accident similar to Chernobyl that occurred in England in the 1957 at Windscale. In the case of Chernobyl, the containment vessel was a brick wall. There several Chernobyl reactors in Cuba today.

8/4/2010 9:54 PM EDT

This site (http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/accident/critical.html) summarizes the 26 nuclear criticality incidents reported in the US from 1943 to 1970. No report of the above ORNL incident.

8/16/2010 7:46 AM EDT

The story somehow sounds untrue! I have worked as an Engineer in the Atomic Energy Dept of India during the beginning of my career and we studied the Nuclear and Reactor Engineering for a year. If with all the control rods removed from the reactor vessel, the reactor was giving a steady full power then there was no reason for panic by the author. If at all the reactor had to go out of control it would take just a few minutes for the neutron flux to multiply to dangerous proportion, even before the operators could finish their first peg of the booze!

8/16/2010 10:44 AM EDT

I'll do one better, I walked over and looked. There is no train, at one time they had a sample system that consisted of a chain drive system that may or may not have had guide rails so it it wouldnt twist and become lodged in the graphite blocks. This is not present in the restored graphite reactor, it has been a museum since 1963.. There are 1248 holes across the 24' loading face, uranium slugs were pushed into each hole at regular intervals such that the previously inserted slugs would progress closer to the core , become bombarded by neutrons from neighboring slugs and contribute to the fission reaction, eventually they were pushed out the back where they fell into a cooling pit and were collected to process out the u238 and plutonium from their exposure. The massive reactor just sat and simmerred it would have been difficult to make it go critical as it was designed to run a max fuel slug capacity. The smaller research reactors like HIFR http://neutrons.ornl.gov/facilities/HFIR/in-vessel.shtml
usesd target baskets, Schull (nobel winner for neutron research) used chain driven sample holders like I mentioned. Also according to Health Sciences, Our Radialogical safety staff told me theyu never heard of any such incident, nor would workers be given a morphine derivative and sent back to work, the policy has always been to go home and sleep it off, The original reactor had no less than 3 control people who oversaw the slug feed process and monitored the radiation counters, there were no control rods, theu used long poles to push all of the slugs out the back. Our historian mentions that the graphite reactor, because it was continuous simmer mode was slow and iefficient so was not likely to go critical... Second hand story interesting but unlikely given ORNL safety record it is highly unlikely..