A nuclear reactor run by students.

[sjastro]

A video which includes interesting scenarios such as what to do if your accidently drop your mobile phone into the reactor.

The reactor has a SCRAM button if the reactor goes out of control, the origin of the acronym SCRAM dates back to the first reactor built by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago in 1942, where the emergency switch-off method consisted of a control rod attached to a rope. Someone stood by ready to chop the rope with an axe if the rod failed: “SCRAM” is supposedly an acronym of “Safety Control Rod Axe Man”.

 

[Halbhh]

I remember visiting a college nuclear reactor with open pool like that, and you looked down and could see the blue glow, and they tell you of course that you are safe due to the distance of water between you and the neutrons, etc.
It's really cool though to look down there and see the blue glow, and so of course someone says what if you fall in? and so on, and they answer like something sorta like you'd have to get really close to the reactor to be in danger.

 

[gmark63]

I, too, have vague memories of going to the reactor at the UofI on a high school physics class trip to the engineering dept and seeing the Cernokov Radiation glow in the pool.

 

[keith99]

They treat it like having a reactor is unusual.

There are at least 3 in the Los Angeles area. One I worked with undergrad, one at the university where I went to grad school and I'm sure there is one or more at Cal Tech.

It was a bit disconcerting that there was at least one glaring error in the video. If you irradiate something it does not always or even usually decay back to what you started with. Anyone who understands breeder reactors or how carbon 14 dating works would know that.