Annular core research reactor

USA / New Mexico / Carnuel /
 military, nuclear reactor
 Upload a photo

Odd facility 1 is a 2-reactor facility; I spent a week there while I worked for the lab. The inner facility is the SPUR, Sandia Pulse reactor. Plates of enriched uranium, basically, with a negative temperature coefficient. It's used to irradiate military stuff (or used to be, I have no idea when it was last used) as a simulation of an atomic explosion. According to the people who had been there a while, when SPUR fired you could be in the parking lot on the left with your eyes closed, and the blue flashes you'd see were fast neutrons zipping through your eyeballs. Nice, eh? Anyway, SPUR uses 'weapons grade' material, thus the safeguards. None of this was classified when I was there, by the way. The other area inside the main fence is ACRR, (Annular core research reactor), a 2MW toy reactor used for various tests. We used it to play with diffractive optics; fun project. There's also GIF, the gamma irradiation facility, inside the same building. Amusingly, the office building on the left was a minor scandal at the time; major cost overruns.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   34°59'53"N   106°32'6"W
This article was last modified 16 years ago