Of special interest to the physicist is the blue glow that surrounds the chain-reacting fuel elements.", Scientific American wrote of the article 'Radiation from a Reactor' by WH Jordan in the October 1951 edition of the magazine.ĭemolition of the "highly deteriorated and contaminated" facility by the end of this year has been identified as a 2023 priority for the US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM). "The photograph on the cover is the first to reveal the interior of an operating atomic pile. It is named after the 1958 Physics Nobel Prize laureate, Pavel Cherenkov. The blue glow that was first photographed at LITR is Cherenkov radiation, observed when electrically charged particles - electrons and protons - are moving at speeds faster than that of light in a specific medium. LITR operated from 1951-1968 (Image: ORNL) As well as being used for training purposes, experiments at the reactor established the feasibility of water-cooled reactors and the LITR was one of the design prototypes for commercial nuclear power plants, according to information from ORNL. Ancillary buildings at LITR are pulled down (Image: EM)īuilt as a mock-up of the Materials Test Reactor that was being constructed at the Idaho National Laboratory, the LITR - also known as Building 3005 - operated from 1951 to 1968. That photo appeared on the cover of the October 1951 issue of Scientific American. The Low Intensity Test Reactor (LITR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) became world-famous when a photographer first captured a blue glow caused by radiation in the pool above the reactor.
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