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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."
Is that it?
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.
I think Bruce might be looking at the past through the lens of today. In the 60s, nuclear plants and labs had a couple of security guards to protect from theft and whatnot. They didn't carry guns. Unless there were secret things going on, these places weren't heavily guarded. Nuclear power wasn't considered a security issue. Nor were airports, train stations, etc.
This explains Bruce's Open Source super powers.
It's like peter parker but instead of a spider, its a pool of radioactive cherenkov radiation.
I knew it!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The way it starts out, it reminded me of the old Scott Adams adventure games from the Atari 800 days...
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
Thats the whole story? I was sort of expecting more. Well, to the final question of that rather short article. It was most likely the area where they kept their spent fuel bundles. I know in some nuclear power plants, the spent fuel bundles have to be kept in a pool of water for a number of years until their half life is met, and they can be transfered to a dry storage facility. Normally the "pool" is not guarded or locked due to personel constantly going in and out, but there is radiation checks that are done upon exiting the area, also you wear a device for monitoring your radiation dose.
As for the blue glow, you can read all about it on wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
Q: What do Bruce Perens and an 82-year old nun have in common?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/10/02/1952221/82-year-old-nun-breaks-into-nuclear-facility-contractors-blamed
I have family who lived in and around Oak Ridge in the 50's. Some of them got booted to make way for the plant. Legend has it one cousin was a technician at the plant, walking around with his clipboard up when he went through the wrong door. He stopped walking, looked down, and realized he was standing at the edge of the pool with the nuclear pile in it. He described the same blue glow. Dropped the clipboard, quit his job and moved to the Bahamas to track satellites for NASA.
The only way this could happen is if the guy in sector 7g was grossly incompetent.
God spoke to me
I live about 4 miles from a reactor. You can walk in and look down at the reactor during business hours. They commonly take local school children on tours. Unless you're going to dive into the water and start trying to yank fuel rods out by hand I don't really see what you could do with it. I suppose you could drop a pipe bomb in there but I don't really think it would do much.
... that I'll never get back.
This was not "News For Nerds", it was "the ramblings of a guy on the internet".
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Lived in Chattanooga for a while "back when"; school trips sometimes went out to Oak Ridge. Souvenirs included a dime in a little case, and it was "fun" to watch a Geiger counter react to it.
Doesn't surprise me that Bruce could get near a non-weapons reactor.
Which was nice...
There is a pile of material at the bottom of the pool, and a blue glow of Cherenkov radiation in the water around it.
> TAKE PILE
You cannot take that item.
> INVENTORY
You have:
> GO NORTH
You cannot go that way.
> JUMP IN POOL
Sorry, I don't know what you mean.
> ENTER POOL
You have jumped into the pool.
You have died from radiation poisoning.
At some of these research reactors, you can pull the rods out of the reactor shortly after criticality and take your measurements with the fuel rod in your hand.
Individual research reactor loads may or may not be particularly dangerous- you can have a radiation well above background level, but far below the rate required to cause health issues.
However, a recently irradiated fuel assembly from a power reactor will kill you in short order*, if not shielded by a lot of water.
As for the young Mr. Peren's misadventure, these places are built for adults with the security clearance and knowledge required to get into the facility in the first place. These knowledgable, responsible adults may then escort visitors on arranged tours.
A visitor can be shown (more or less) whatever their escort has access too. The escort's duty is to keep the visitors out of trouble while showing them around. It seems as though Bruce's escort was a bit negligent (and knew it, from the student's displeasure.)
*perversely, the high radiation level of a used fuel assembly is a bit of a security feature. You can't steal something that will kill you before you can get out the door.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
You can still see the characteristic and beautiful Cherenkov radiation at the research reactor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I've seen it a number of times.
Up until recently, it contained 1400 pounds of highly-enriched (weapons grade) U-235 in 58-pound bundles. It is in a building across from a 7-level parking ramp and an 80,000-person football stadium.
There are a number of such "Research and Test Reactors" around the US.
A 2005 ABC News report found:
- "No guards. No metal detectors. Bags were brought into the reactor room. Doors to the building are open during the day, and no IDs are required for entry."
- "The building was undergoing major renovation, and construction workers, large trucks and building materials surrounded the rear exterior."
- "The university Web site includes a 'virtual tour' and detailed photos, descriptions and diagrams of the reactor, the fuel elements and the control room. The reactor manager informed the Fellows that tours had to be scheduled three weeks in advance and that a locked door with a window view of the reactor was the closest they could get. But a friendly professor told the Fellows about a basement entry to the reactor room, where a reactor operator opened the door and let the Fellows photograph the reactor from the doorway. Two other operators allowed the Fellows to come inside carrying their tote bags, and briefly take photographs about 15 feet from the reactor's base. No campus security ever approached the Fellows."
An 2004 New York Times report found:
- "[UWNR's] fuel is weapons-grade uranium. If it were stolen, experts say, it could give terrorists or criminals a major head start on an atomic bomb."
- "[...] out of concern that the uranium might be turned into bomb fuel, the Department of Energy has spent millions of dollars to develop lower-grade fuel and convert scores of reactors to run on it. [...] But the six campus reactors in this country are not among them."
- "Campus reactors have far less security than places where the government keeps bomb-grade uranium, and they may have foreign students of unknown political sympathies."
- "[...] the fuel now in the campus reactors is dangerously radioactive, making it hard to handle. [...] however, that highly enriched uranium was an easier fuel from which to build a bomb than is plutonium."
- "The reactor operators are paid $10.50 an hour. They recently got a raise to that level [...] because someone discovered that campus file clerks were paid more than the reactor operators.
- "[...] the current fuel load will last about 108 years at current rates of use."
"The truck is the real threat. You want to make sure the truck stays away 250 feet minimum." - Ronald Timm, Former Department of Energy security analyst
Here, the primary entrance to a major parking ramp is about 50 feet away.
Also, it's not like it's really a mystery what he saw at BNL. There have only been so many reactors there in the last 60 years. It's odd, beautiful, and I suppose comparatively rare for a person to see, but it's not a big deal.
My initial reaction to this is "this isn't Hollywood, where two 9mm bullets makes a car explode." Radiation in fatal doses takes at leas hours and usually days or weeks to kill you. If it's extremely high it could give you a pounding headache, dizzy, very sick to your stomach, or possibly even pass out. But if you got to that point quickly you'd have been many times over the fatal dose. A high enough dose of xrays can knock you unconscious, but even that requires a more energetic source than decay.
Basically what I'm saying is radiation poisoning isn't instant. All but the most intense exposure will simply write your death sentence. It will take at least many hours to play out and actually stop you from breathing. You could probably swim down and grab a rod and try to muscle it to the surface. (it's very dense) By the time you got to the surface you might even be starting to show signs of blistering on your hand that is holding the rod, but even that is more likely to be in the 10 minute range. The heat the rod is producing without the water cooling it would probably be more of a bother for you. If it was radioactive enough, you'd be a dead man walking, but walking for sure, for awhile. (and setting off every radiation alarm you got near on your way out the door with the rod) Oh, and it might be messing with your vision when you got close to the rods. Some of the people that were cleaning up at chernobyl got their skin tingling and got to see the "fairy lights" sparkling around them, which had nothing to do with actual sparkles around them, it was messing with their nervous system at that point. A lot of those people died, a good chunk of them 2-20 weeks later.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
are the most unsafe place you can imagine. I worked in a lab where a small accelerator building was attached. All doors were unlocked an unsupervised (only the "tritium" room where most radioactive sample were stored) was locked. The rest was only locked/with alarms when the accelerator was running. Some (quite small, but highly active) source used for the lab courses were (in a pile of shielding material), essentially open around the clock; and that was in the mid-90s. Everybody who knew where these were could just go in the building, enter the room and take them (if you are stupid enough....). In the same building i opened a shelf (which had no warning signs) and suddenly found contaminated tools (which were marked).
If we had an open day, and the hand of a four year old would have been small enough to insert into the hole into which the samples were let down by a rod to activate them, also something bad could have happened.
At least fore radioactive stuff there was a mandatory handling lesson, and standard procedures. What really annoys me is when it comes to chemicals in science labs. You would be surprised how much radioation it takes to result in the same increase in cancer rate as for certain chemicals commonly used; which is exactly the reason why industry either banned these or is using them with very good precautions and good working equipment, while in sciene any untrained grad student just uses these without gloves.
I agree that even on a 'open door' day a door with seriously radioactive material in an large accellerator facility should be locked, but its easy for me to imagine that its not. I believe that the biggest problem is "build a fence around the facility and we know everybody inside" method. That worked in the last century during normal operation (some other person would be spotted quite reliably), but on open door days it obviously does not work and i seriously doubt it works with the current fluctuation of inhabitants of a scientific building.
After one or two years in science, the first thing which i did when entering a new working space in an unknown area was to clean the table very carefully and look in all drawers on my desk. (and radioactivity was the least of my concerns....).
Exactly. A kid shouldn't be able to walk in and see a 30 foot deep pool of water without the presence of a trained lifeguard and the availability of a suitable sized flotation device.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
My father use to work for the French national police force. It's a half police, half military police corp. ;)
One day, he visited a nuclear power plant for whatever security reason. With a group of people, he walked around one of these famous pool, then just clumsily fell in it. He was of course decontaminated as soon as I happened, and well, he still has no cancer decades after, even as a heavy smoker.
Sadly, he did not get any superpower either, just a smart kid, years later
Stupidity is the root of all evil.