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Bruce Perens: The Day I Blundered Into the Nuclear Facility
Bruce Perens writes "I found myself alone in a room, in front of a deep square or rectangular pool of impressively clear, still water. There was a pile of material at the bottom of the pool, and a blue glow of Cherenkov radiation in the water around it. To this day, I can't explain how an unsupervised kid could ever have gotten in there."
Not sure whether BMRR or HFBR were water-moderated, but I'd bet it was the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor. A bunch of beautiful glowing stuff at the bottom of a deep pool of water is a common configuration for a research reactor used for the production of medical isotopes.
Lots of universities had research reactors (a few still do). They had no more security than some bored grad students working in the outer lab. If it was an open house even they would have been too busy to look after every wandering kid.
"Pictures, or it didn't happen":
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/medalsmementoes/dimes.htm
This was a scientific test reactor... The security is at the gate and they passed that. The actual room is totally safe. The "old" neutron test reactor of the TH-Munich could be visited. If you fell into the water you would need treatment; for desalination. That is they would rub you down with lotion, because the distilled water would remove the salts in your outer skin. Now the "new" one on the other hand can't be seen, but not because of radiation, but because it is a high pressure reactor. OMG I saw a nuclear reactor...