A picture on K-State’s web site today showed the tornado damage done to Ward Hall late last night, which houses the research reactor. There was no description of what the picture was on the web site.
Fox 4 KC quoted Mo Hosni, head of K-State’s department of mechanical and nuclear engineering:
“There is no danger from the reactor, even if the roof and walls had been damaged”
Fox 4 reported:
Although Ward itself was damaged, because of the design of the building, the reactor remains safe and unharmed.
An interior view of the roof of the reactor building looked like this in April 2007:
The core of the research reactor was safe at all time. The structure housing the reactor core is quite massive, as can be seen in this diagram:
Reuters (New York) reported Tornado hits university’s research reactor in Kansas:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A tornado damaged the building housing a nuclear research reactor at Kansas State University, the university told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in an event report early Thursday.
The tornado caused extensive damage to the building, but no damage to the reactor, which had been shut down properly earlier in the day, the university said. …
Because of the event, the university declared an alert, which is the second lowest of the NRC’s four emergency classifications.
There are more than 30 operating research and test reactors in the United States, according to the NRC’s website.
Pictures of the construction of this facility were put online as part of the 50th Anniversary of the Nuclear Engineering Department at K-State, which was held in April 2007. Other historic pictures can be seen here.
When the reactor is on,
many are intrigued by the faint blue glow of the reactor core (from Cherenkov radiation).
K-State Triga II Reactor Core in April 2007.
Nuclear energy can be safe, even when a facility is attacked by the forces of a tornado, but politics has stopped the construction of any new nuclear power plants in the U.S. since the mid-1970s.
In recent years the K-State nuclear engineering department merged with the mechanical engineering department to survive. We are facing a brain-drain, and may not have the needed nuclear engineers if we decided to counter our foreign energy dependence with nuclear power.
Politics is now trying to kill the construction of new coal power plants in Kansas. Should we worry now about having enough power for heating and cooling during our retirement years when the wind does not blow? Do the politicians care if their policies may cause brown-outs, or even black outs, during periods of peak energy demand in the summer and winter?
Tags: Kansas State University, nuclear reactor, tornado damage, Triga Mark II Reactor
