They used to use uranium glaze to color pottery and other objects

[jim hardy]

Jim and Astronuc can the public still tour this facility, or is it like all NPPs after Sep 11. It sounds like a really cool place to go see, how would you rate it compared to EBR 1?

I don't know, A_V... for me it was a 1968 field trip for our reactor physics class.

i thought EBR-1 was more interesting. But I had forty years more experience under my belt.
The hand made meter scales in the control room, the four light bulbs that were lighted by world's first atomic electricity, and the concrete wall that the guys all signed , actually I felt really moved by their greatness. They did so much with just sliderules and vacuum tubes.
Great power and humility combined makes my tears well up..

I asked the knowledgeable young lady conducting tours that day whether I could surmise from her expertise that she was a physics major.
She replied "No, my Dad is a physicist here so I grew up with science. I'm majoring in Literature."

"Literature?" I thought... "What a Gothic storybook scene this is - mad scientist's incredibly beautiful daughter roaming the bowels of an abandoned nuclear plant.."

So no, I don't know if they have open house . But EBR sure does.

 

[Kutt]

During the late 1970's a woman named Karen Silkwood was badly contaminated with radiation while working at an unusually poorly kept and sloppily operated nuclear fuel processing facility.

The pellets handled at the fuel processing plant that Silkwood worked at in Cimarron, Oklahoma, (which has long since been abandoned and condemned due to dangerously high radioactivity) were handled through thick glass and with insulated gloves.

So at least in my mind, I was under the assumption that all fuel pellets were dangerous and radioactive.

The fuel pellets she worked with may have been a certain type of material which was highly hazardous and not the virtually harmless kind that you described during your experience at one of these facilities.

They even made a major Hollywood movie about her case. It's a good movie, definitely worth a watch.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086312/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

[Argentum Vulpes]

During the late 1970's a woman named Karen Silkwood was badly contaminated with radiation while working at an unusually poorly kept and sloppily operated nuclear fuel processing facility.

The pellets handled at the fuel processing plant that Silkwood worked at in Oklahoma (which has long since been abandoned and condemned due to dangerously high radioactivity) were handled through thick glass and with insulated gloves.

The fuel pellets she worked with may have been a certain type of material which was highly hazardous and not the practically harmless kind that you described during your experience at one of these facilities.

They even made a major Hollywood movie about her case.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086312/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Wow Kutt where do you dig this stuff up? I get it you don't like nuclear energy, and I have a feeling that more information will get you off you extremist horse.

First the Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site owned by the Kerr-McGee Corporation produced MOX pellets and they require them to be ground and polished. Both operations produce particulate dust that if exposed to oxygen will self ignite. Therefore production of it must be done in an inert environment, hence the glove boxes.

The reason for the plant shutting down was not contamination but the fact that the fuel that was produced was for a government contract, for a reactor that no longer needed fuel. In 2000 a majority of the site was green fieled (AKA unrestricted usage), the only part left is some ground water remediation with full unrestricted usage to happen by 2017. And serching the NRC I can not find any incident reports of the Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site.

As for the movie if you get your information on the nuclear industry from Hollywood just stop. In movies the truth is always the first thing to hit the cutting room floor.

 

[Astronuc]

During the late 1970's a woman named Karen Silkwood was badly contaminated with radiation while working at an unusually poorly kept and sloppily operated nuclear fuel processing facility.

The pellets handled at the fuel processing plant that Silkwood worked at in Cimarron, Oklahoma, (which has long since been abandoned and condemned due to dangerously high radioactivity) were handled through thick glass and with insulated gloves.

So at least in my mind, I was under the assumption that all fuel pellets were dangerous and radioactive.

The fuel pellets she worked with may have been a certain type of material which was highly hazardous and not the virtually harmless kind that you described during your experience at one of these facilities.

Karen Silkwood died in a 'suspicious' car accident in 1974. The plant had some serious violations of health and safety regulations.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/silkwood.html

The plant was not 'abandoned and condemned', but rather 'decontaminated and decommissioned'. Ref: http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10151437-tEZOv9/native/10151437.pdf

The Cimarron plant contained the chemical process apparatus and manufacturing tooling and procedures to fabricate mixed oxide(PuO₂UO₂) fuel pins for the (ZPPR) Zero Power Plutonium Reactor and the (FFTF) Fast Flux Test Reactor programs.

The process started with plutonium nitrate feed solution provided by the Department of Energy (DOE, AEC at the time) and uranyl nitrate solution provided by Kerr-McGee. The nitrate solutions were weighed and mixed in proportion, processed into powder, compacted into shape (right cylinders) and sintered into ceramic pellets. The pellets were ground to l size, and loaded into tubes and encapsulated by welding end inspected plugs in the tubes which completed the pins. The completed pins were inspected for a multitude of attributes, the acceptable pins were supplied to others for (wire wrap) further fabrication and assembly into fuel elements or bundles for installation into the reactor. These campaigns were successfully completed.

I know that Hanford took over fabrication of FFTF fuel, and I believe ZPPR fuel production was also moved to another site in the 1970s, about the time the AEC was restructured into the NRC and ERDA/DOE.

Mixed-oxide (U,Pu)O₂ was handled in glove boxes. Modern plants use remote handling with bulk/batch processing. MOX fuel is more radiocative than conventional UO₂ fuel.

 

[jim hardy]

Kutt one does not impress people by repeating the silly hyperbole bandied about in shallow tabloids and movies made solely to excite.

When you begin instead to post information with content based on fact , I will be impressed because you will be demonstrating self improvement and growth.

Read up on MOX at Belgonucleaire's site.

Read "The Curve of Binding Energy" by John McPhee.
Note difference in style between that book and "Prometheus Crisis".

Even "China Syndrome" movie managed to be reasonably correct in their science.

Why do you have this need to exaggerate?

 

[clancy688]

Why do you have this need to exaggerate?

Because radiation and nuclear power is A Very Bad Thing indeed. Everybody knows this stuff is dangerous. We're constantly being told how evil this stuff is by the Anti-Nuclear-Lobby. Those paragons of fair- and scientifical correctness wouldn't tell nothing else but the truth, would they?
And all those nuclear scientists who have been handling the dangerous stuff for decades are dulled and clearly don't realize the danger of their work!

Therefore it's his duty as a citizen to show you nuke guys the error of your ways.

P.S.
Whoever finds and irony in this post may keep it...

 

[anorlunda]

The uranium glazing on your cup might not be radioactive but the mineral water you put in it might have been. In fact they used to print "guaranteed radioactive" on the labels of some mineral waters.