Reed Research Reactor

It is a pool-type TRIGA Mark I reactor, built by General Atomics in 1968 and operated since then under licence from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The facility provides scientific irradiation services to a broad community outside the college, but its primary mission is for student initiated research, training, and hands-on education.

[4] When the facilities were visited by ABC's "Radioactive Roadtrip" Primetime special, the fact that the school had no engineering program was purported as evidence that university reactors are sometimes kept as more of a status symbol than as a valid research tool.

This is a quote from the ABC website: University Reaction: The reactor is a "zero-risk facility," and there is no plausible way it is a threat, said Edward Hershey, director of public affairs at Reed College.

The capsule is loaded into the system in the radiochemistry laboratory next to the reactor and is then transferred pneumatically into the core-irradiation position for a predetermined time.

The transfer time from the core to the terminal is less than seven seconds, making this method of irradiating samples particularly useful for experiments involving radioisotopes with short half-lives.

The rotating specimen rack (lazy susan) is located in a well on top of the graphite reflector which surrounds the core.

Typically, the rotating rack is used by researchers when longer irradiation times (generally greater than five minutes) are required.

The average thermal neutron flux in the rotating rack position is approximately 2×1012 n/cm2/s with a cadmium ratio of 6.0 at full power.