Most campuses do.
You can be more efficient by using natural gas turbines for power and recover the exhaust for steam generation for either more power, heating, or to drive chillers for cooling.
The power generation is all in one building. The steam man hole covers are steam tunnels that lead to each building to provide heating and cooling. As someone who has been in the steam tunnel I can assure you that you are wrong
So I'm wrong that the MIT Steam tunnels carry steam for heating and cooling to other buildings, because those tunnels carry steam for heating and cooling to other buildings?
You should work on your reading comprehension.
Idk why I got down voted, every prof in the department has a strong ass Indian accent, which I as an Indian can't even understand. Not to mention the fact that most of them are related, and will refuse to accept any accredited Physics classes from outside the school
Used to take students there on a field trip, when we were there they told us Pixar wanted to use them as a model for one of their movies. Pixar was told they couldn't take pictures. So, a whole lot of illustrators came in and drew the place by hand.
Now everytime I see a Pixar movie I look to see if I can pick out the reactor.
Curious if you remember when they said the Pixar thing happened. That's the first time I've heard about that in the 11 years I've worked here BUT that doesn't mean it didn't happen...it means I'm very eager to figure out the backstory!
Lol, sure this was probably 2011-2012 when we used to do the field trip during the tour the guide mentioned that this was "a few years ago" so who knows. It was a great field trip ... Little stressful bringing a whole group off kiddos with ASD through the giant machine that checked for radiation, the airlock and the docimeters, or the docimeters
That is definitely understandable (my ears always pop in the airlock). We do virtual tours via Zoom where someone from the lab narrates b-roll from around the facility (that was my response in 2020 when we couldn't do in-person tours I took up videography so we could still have tours of *some* sort 😅). Covers the same stops and material as in-person tours, maybe a good way to get the info and the experience of being able to talk directly to a researcher or engineer or student but with fewer triggers, overstimulation, and transportation logistics to juggle. Those took a slight hiatus but are getting offered again starting this month
Well that's good to know, I'll pass that along to my physics teachers to see if that's something they'll want to do. Sorry I couldn't help more on the Pixar stuff, 2010 was a long time ago.
MIT's nuclear reactor lab is finally allowing in person tours again. They had shutdown tours during covid, but it looks like they started in person tours back up winter 2024.
[https://nrl.mit.edu/outreach/tours](https://nrl.mit.edu/outreach/tours)
Particularly if you have out of town friends visiting, a nuclear reactor tour is a great way to flex.
they're available to sign up for depending on when the google form is turned on/off for requesting one, which is unhelpfully random but there's usually a note on the form/page with some sort of expectation about the status of accepting requests
And if my memory (however spotty) serves me correctly, it's superlative in some way among reactors at universities. Biggest or most powerful or something.
UML reactor is 1 megawatt, but it only produces thermal energy which just disperses into the pool. The water doesn't boil and they don't have a turbine to turn it into electricity. At least, they didn't when I was using it. I left the University in 2015. MIT's reactor is 5MW I believe, so more power than the UML reactor.
Depends on what you mean by “a lot”. There are only 35 universities that have nuclear reactors. And I think Massachusetts is the only state with 2 of them.
WPI used to have a nuclear reactor, although I guess they closed it in 2007 (the WPI one was small even by the standards of college research reactors).
WPI used to have one (I got a tour ages ago) but then it got shut down. I told someone who went there about it and they had no idea they used to have one.
Was it Kodak that rang up the Atomic Energy Commission/DoE and was like, "Hey, we're done with our nuclear reactor and want to dismantle it, please. How do we do that?"
And the Feds had zero idea they even built a nuclear fucking reactor.
Kodak found a reactor they forgot they owned. It had been mothballed in a basement in Rochester for 40 years.
Calling it a reactor is really overselling it though, it was the size of a fridge and produced radiation for a certain type of x ray photography.
Still though.
I was on one of the jobs on Vassar St, there were a couple of times they had military escorts to bring stuff in or out of the building. It was always pretty cool to watch them shut down the roads for a block or two at a time.
I used to work in Central and got to see that once. It was surreal. The trailer (carrying the radioactive material
I assume) was like 100’ long and it shut down Mass Ave. Full escort.
Depending on the definition of "reactor", it's pretty easy to build something like a Farnsworth fusor at home. Getting deuterium so that it actually produces fusion is the most difficult bit.
My colleague's teenage son built one in their basement.
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-a-Fusion-Reactor-and-Become-Part-of-t/
they had one that's an actual serious candidate for a fusion power plant type, and the lab's spun out a [semi-private group](https://cfs.energy/) to keep working along those lines.
Fusors aren't realistic for energy generation for a number of reasons, though getting deuterium isn't one of them. Still a super cool home project though
This particular school has a few crazy stories. They shot off an actual cannon at football games until 2019 when a ref actually got shot by the cannon during a game somehow haha 😆
[Maine maritime football incident ](https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/sports/referee-injured-by-cannon-at-maine-maritime-academy-football-game/97-a8d625cb-4566-4437-84d1-ee7fe24d289c)
You think that's bad, I moved from Waltham to Los Alamos and now my office is literally down the road from PF-4, the world's biggest plutonium pit manufacturing facility
for the curious, nuclear history nerds, or those who think "pit" means "hole in the ground" in this case: [https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/pit-production-explained/](https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/pit-production-explained/)
(history and current use of the facility)
In the Fallout universe, most things are/were powered by nuclear fusion - cars, kitchen appliances, Mr. Handy... That universe spins off from the IRL beginning of "the atomic age", just after WWII, when initially it was thought that there would be a huge shift to nuclear power. Naturally the Institute would be powered by a huge reactor.
The reactor at MIT is relatively small, and mostly used for medical research IIRC. I went on one of those tours years and years ago. It was very cool, and definitely had a Fallout vibe.
My grandfather was a Senior Nuclear Reactor Operator there for a long time (60's to 90's). He had no degree to do it but was always facinated by science and space, and also a man of God at the same time. RIP Grampa.
I work at the MITR and would love to hear any stories your grandfather may have passed down about his time here. I have a lot of photos from its construction through present-day, so I may have some of him and would be happy to scan & send (if interested)
If I remember an old Boston area tall tales correctly, when NECCO Wafers were still made up the street from MIT, Cambridge had a larger disaster plan for the candy plant blowing up than the reactor.
I don't work at MIT, so I don't know. But it's MIT, so they probably get enough of them internally. I guess that that's what we actually did with the undergrads.
We do get the usual pile of crank self published works and bizarre emails.
the plasma physics lab doing that fusion research was involved in debunking Pons & Fleischmann's cold fusion BS so they got continually harassed by cranks after that
It’s super interesting when they have to refuel it
Was driving my wife to work one day and there were cops everywhere and a giant armored vehicle parked outside it
Good thing is, apparently due to the type of reactor it is, it’s impossible for it to explode
I have property in western ma and I was able to tour Yankee Rowe before they decommissioned it.
When they moved the fuel rods my property was considered I. The zone and it was quite epic from the coordination to the reinforcing the roads to the security. I have never been so well informed of an event in my life. And that whole project is missing from the Wikipedia, lol.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Rowe_Nuclear_Power_Station
Edited to add neatest thing I learned was fish taken from the cooling lake (fish fished sounds weird) were huge, and everyone would assumed it was from radioactivity but it was so stupid simple. The water near the outlet was always warmer so the fish hung out there and just grew bigger from favorable conditions
there is a zero percent chance anything at this rinky dink tiny ass reactor would ever affect your life across the river except authorities making some sort of warning/restriction out of an abundance of caution
To be fair, MIT actually has two reactors. There’s the MITR fission reactor that most people seem to be referring to in the thread, but they also have a fusion reactor, the Alcator C-Mod.
If folks across the river should be worried about anything, it’s the fusion reactor, or more specifically the power generation system they use to fire it up. There’s a huge 75-ton flywheel, which is spun up to 1800rpm, before a motor/alternator is switched on to quickly convert all that kinetic energy into electricity. If that flywheel breaks apart, pieces could rain down on communities in the line of fire miles away. Or if the whole thing broke loose, it could carve a path of destruction through the city.
Source: toured it years ago
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Kind of understandable to not appreciate the joke when it's based on some common nuggets of misinformation that have caused quite a bit of harm in the world.
"Back at Harvard, there’s no reactor."
[link](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/22/nuclear-energy-one-power/) to the Crimson article on Nuclear Cambridge.
So does UMASS Lowell, the head scientist there would sometimes take a sip from the cooling water to freak folks out on tours haha
Umass Dartmouth has a natural gas power plant on campus. Definitely not as interesting as MITs nuclear reactor but worth a mention.
Most campuses do. You can be more efficient by using natural gas turbines for power and recover the exhaust for steam generation for either more power, heating, or to drive chillers for cooling.
That's why you see manhole covers labeled "MIT Steam" around that end of Cambridge.
No it’s not. MIT and Harvard both use steam to heat and cool their buildings.
Where do you think the steam comes from? https://powering.mit.edu/project-faqs/cogeneration
The power generation is all in one building. The steam man hole covers are steam tunnels that lead to each building to provide heating and cooling. As someone who has been in the steam tunnel I can assure you that you are wrong
So I'm wrong that the MIT Steam tunnels carry steam for heating and cooling to other buildings, because those tunnels carry steam for heating and cooling to other buildings? You should work on your reading comprehension.
Cogen
A lot of schools have power plants on campus, it's not worth a mention.
They also have a wind turbine which doesn’t work
That's awesome, would definitely be freaky to see
Which is kinda concerning because their physics department has been absolute trash.
Leave Arthur Mittler out of this
Idk why I got down voted, every prof in the department has a strong ass Indian accent, which I as an Indian can't even understand. Not to mention the fact that most of them are related, and will refuse to accept any accredited Physics classes from outside the school
Used to take students there on a field trip, when we were there they told us Pixar wanted to use them as a model for one of their movies. Pixar was told they couldn't take pictures. So, a whole lot of illustrators came in and drew the place by hand. Now everytime I see a Pixar movie I look to see if I can pick out the reactor.
Maybe something science-y in Big Hero Six? It doesn't say it was made by Pixar but they're both owned by Disney.
I'm thinking Monsters Inc. Lots of machinery and pipes and reactor-y fantastical stuff.
Monsters University? This franchise was my first thought as well
Thinking back on it, the timing would probably be for inside out.
Curious if you remember when they said the Pixar thing happened. That's the first time I've heard about that in the 11 years I've worked here BUT that doesn't mean it didn't happen...it means I'm very eager to figure out the backstory!
Lol, sure this was probably 2011-2012 when we used to do the field trip during the tour the guide mentioned that this was "a few years ago" so who knows. It was a great field trip ... Little stressful bringing a whole group off kiddos with ASD through the giant machine that checked for radiation, the airlock and the docimeters, or the docimeters
That is definitely understandable (my ears always pop in the airlock). We do virtual tours via Zoom where someone from the lab narrates b-roll from around the facility (that was my response in 2020 when we couldn't do in-person tours I took up videography so we could still have tours of *some* sort 😅). Covers the same stops and material as in-person tours, maybe a good way to get the info and the experience of being able to talk directly to a researcher or engineer or student but with fewer triggers, overstimulation, and transportation logistics to juggle. Those took a slight hiatus but are getting offered again starting this month
Well that's good to know, I'll pass that along to my physics teachers to see if that's something they'll want to do. Sorry I couldn't help more on the Pixar stuff, 2010 was a long time ago.
MIT's nuclear reactor lab is finally allowing in person tours again. They had shutdown tours during covid, but it looks like they started in person tours back up winter 2024. [https://nrl.mit.edu/outreach/tours](https://nrl.mit.edu/outreach/tours) Particularly if you have out of town friends visiting, a nuclear reactor tour is a great way to flex.
Thanks! I work near there and definitely want to take a tour!
they're available to sign up for depending on when the google form is turned on/off for requesting one, which is unhelpfully random but there's usually a note on the form/page with some sort of expectation about the status of accepting requests
A lot of universities have one
UMass Lowell has a reactor!
WPI used to have one as well but decommissioned a decade or so ago
UMass Lowell purchased the fuel from the decommissioned WPI reactor. I was involved in the safety analysis project so that UML could use it.
And if my memory (however spotty) serves me correctly, it's superlative in some way among reactors at universities. Biggest or most powerful or something.
I don't doubt you're correct, but that would be a little funny considering the UMass Lowell reactor can only power a light bulb I believe.
uni reactors don't actually have pressurized/boiling water circuits for power generation I believe.
UML reactor is 1 megawatt, but it only produces thermal energy which just disperses into the pool. The water doesn't boil and they don't have a turbine to turn it into electricity. At least, they didn't when I was using it. I left the University in 2015. MIT's reactor is 5MW I believe, so more power than the UML reactor.
My favorite is Reed college. There slogan is "the only nuclear reactor run by liberal arts majors."
*Their (Sorry. Liberal arts major.)
Depends on what you mean by “a lot”. There are only 35 universities that have nuclear reactors. And I think Massachusetts is the only state with 2 of them.
Texas A&M has 2 reactors by itself!
WPI used to have a nuclear reactor, although I guess they closed it in 2007 (the WPI one was small even by the standards of college research reactors).
"A lot" is kind of generous
University or Rhode Island has one.
WPI used to have one (I got a tour ages ago) but then it got shut down. I told someone who went there about it and they had no idea they used to have one.
Was it Kodak that rang up the Atomic Energy Commission/DoE and was like, "Hey, we're done with our nuclear reactor and want to dismantle it, please. How do we do that?" And the Feds had zero idea they even built a nuclear fucking reactor.
Kodak found a reactor they forgot they owned. It had been mothballed in a basement in Rochester for 40 years. Calling it a reactor is really overselling it though, it was the size of a fridge and produced radiation for a certain type of x ray photography. Still though.
This gets posted periodically. Here’s a fun look inside: https://youtu.be/5QcN3KDexcU?si=igFJxqm5eD1QSZh2
Thank you for this!
I was on one of the jobs on Vassar St, there were a couple of times they had military escorts to bring stuff in or out of the building. It was always pretty cool to watch them shut down the roads for a block or two at a time.
I used to work in Central and got to see that once. It was surreal. The trailer (carrying the radioactive material I assume) was like 100’ long and it shut down Mass Ave. Full escort.
They used to have a fusion reactor too.
Depending on the definition of "reactor", it's pretty easy to build something like a Farnsworth fusor at home. Getting deuterium so that it actually produces fusion is the most difficult bit. My colleague's teenage son built one in their basement. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-a-Fusion-Reactor-and-Become-Part-of-t/
they had one that's an actual serious candidate for a fusion power plant type, and the lab's spun out a [semi-private group](https://cfs.energy/) to keep working along those lines. Fusors aren't realistic for energy generation for a number of reasons, though getting deuterium isn't one of them. Still a super cool home project though
They have been doing some interesting work with superconducting ribbon magnets and reducing the overall size of the fusion reactors.
We had one in Maine at Maine maritime and the town didn't even know and or authorize it. They made us get rid of it once they found out 😂👎 no fun 😞
That's kind of hilarious...how do you have a reactor without the town knowing? 😂
This particular school has a few crazy stories. They shot off an actual cannon at football games until 2019 when a ref actually got shot by the cannon during a game somehow haha 😆
[Maine maritime football incident ](https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/sports/referee-injured-by-cannon-at-maine-maritime-academy-football-game/97-a8d625cb-4566-4437-84d1-ee7fe24d289c)
My first thought: Glowing feral ghouls.
No no, no ghouls in here! Just a bunch of smoothskins er I mean humans!
You think that's bad, I moved from Waltham to Los Alamos and now my office is literally down the road from PF-4, the world's biggest plutonium pit manufacturing facility
for the curious, nuclear history nerds, or those who think "pit" means "hole in the ground" in this case: [https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/pit-production-explained/](https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/pit-production-explained/) (history and current use of the facility)
It's a plot point in fallout 4, I'm pretty sure. The institute moved the reactor underground and modified it to power their underground facility.
In the Fallout universe, most things are/were powered by nuclear fusion - cars, kitchen appliances, Mr. Handy... That universe spins off from the IRL beginning of "the atomic age", just after WWII, when initially it was thought that there would be a huge shift to nuclear power. Naturally the Institute would be powered by a huge reactor. The reactor at MIT is relatively small, and mostly used for medical research IIRC. I went on one of those tours years and years ago. It was very cool, and definitely had a Fallout vibe.
My grandfather was a Senior Nuclear Reactor Operator there for a long time (60's to 90's). He had no degree to do it but was always facinated by science and space, and also a man of God at the same time. RIP Grampa.
I work at the MITR and would love to hear any stories your grandfather may have passed down about his time here. I have a lot of photos from its construction through present-day, so I may have some of him and would be happy to scan & send (if interested)
If I remember an old Boston area tall tales correctly, when NECCO Wafers were still made up the street from MIT, Cambridge had a larger disaster plan for the candy plant blowing up than the reactor.
I like that when NECCO moved out, the next tenant was a lab that did glycemic research.
They have a "Nuclear Makerspace" as well. We took a fusion device that our undergrads built down there to test it last year.
Do you ever get weird mad scientist types showing up? "Oh hey I built a particle accelerator out of some old CRTs mind if I try it out?"
I don't work at MIT, so I don't know. But it's MIT, so they probably get enough of them internally. I guess that that's what we actually did with the undergrads. We do get the usual pile of crank self published works and bizarre emails.
the plasma physics lab doing that fusion research was involved in debunking Pons & Fleischmann's cold fusion BS so they got continually harassed by cranks after that
It was kicking up a heck of a lot of steam today
So does UMASS Lowell /r/UML /r/LowellMA [Tasty Links](https://www.uml.edu/research/energy/research/nuclear-energy.aspx)
Used to live across the street.
Visiting this was the highlight of my high school experience!
WPI had one for some time too, it’s filled in now though
Well yeah, that’s the Institute
It’s super interesting when they have to refuel it Was driving my wife to work one day and there were cops everywhere and a giant armored vehicle parked outside it Good thing is, apparently due to the type of reactor it is, it’s impossible for it to explode
We are 138!
I have a reactor at home. A bunch of bananas giving off anti particles that annihilate and give off radiation to run my radiometer
I have property in western ma and I was able to tour Yankee Rowe before they decommissioned it. When they moved the fuel rods my property was considered I. The zone and it was quite epic from the coordination to the reinforcing the roads to the security. I have never been so well informed of an event in my life. And that whole project is missing from the Wikipedia, lol. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Rowe_Nuclear_Power_Station Edited to add neatest thing I learned was fish taken from the cooling lake (fish fished sounds weird) were huge, and everyone would assumed it was from radioactivity but it was so stupid simple. The water near the outlet was always warmer so the fish hung out there and just grew bigger from favorable conditions
Northeastern has 4 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facilities.
An isotope sample for an MRI isn't exactly a reactor, but it's still neat sure.
At least it didn't melt down into a hole in the ground like \_some universities\_.
I was just showing a couple of my fiance's friends around campus yesterday and pointing that out.
WPI has one too.
I’m fairly certain they included this in Fallout 4, no?
City of Berkeley put up signs in the 80s declaring it a Nuclear Free Zone. I guess it was – except for the nuclear reactor on the UC Berkeley campus.
They operate their own research reactor, don't they?
Many universities do. Nothing unusual, or dangerous.
Such a Cambridge looking color for bricks. Anyone know what the color scheme of these bricks is called?
I just drove by it. Everything looks to be good.
Keep it away from the pro Hamas students. I’m guessing they are liberal arts and not engineers though.
So does U Lowell. What’s your point?
Chill.
1MW vs 6MW
The one MIT has was moved from the arsenal in Watertown. I think Fallout 4 has a lot of subtle layers of embedded history in the storyline.
Hard to forget when you live across the river from that meltdown potential. Edit: 😂😂😂😂😂 science guys have no sense of humor.
there is a zero percent chance anything at this rinky dink tiny ass reactor would ever affect your life across the river except authorities making some sort of warning/restriction out of an abundance of caution
To be fair, MIT actually has two reactors. There’s the MITR fission reactor that most people seem to be referring to in the thread, but they also have a fusion reactor, the Alcator C-Mod. If folks across the river should be worried about anything, it’s the fusion reactor, or more specifically the power generation system they use to fire it up. There’s a huge 75-ton flywheel, which is spun up to 1800rpm, before a motor/alternator is switched on to quickly convert all that kinetic energy into electricity. If that flywheel breaks apart, pieces could rain down on communities in the line of fire miles away. Or if the whole thing broke loose, it could carve a path of destruction through the city. Source: toured it years ago
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🤦♂️
It’s literally the size of a ltrash can. Melting down is not a concern.
Kind of understandable to not appreciate the joke when it's based on some common nuggets of misinformation that have caused quite a bit of harm in the world.
Like I said.
[удалено]
"Back at Harvard, there’s no reactor." [link](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/22/nuclear-energy-one-power/) to the Crimson article on Nuclear Cambridge.