B reactor loading face
To many, this is the reactor itself. It is the huge, auditorium like
room, which
contains the front face of the reactor. This is called the loading face, because
this is where slugs of uranium fuel were loaded into the reactor itself. It is
probably the most physically impressive part of the tour.
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Above: The hallway and entrance to B reactor. Various models, displays, and photographs have been put in place to give the visitor an idea of the significance of this place. Left: The entrance to the loading face. Below: This is what you see, when you first enter the huge hall of the loading face. This room is approximately as large as the reactor itself, to facilitate changing out loading tubes, repairs, and general operations. The reactor face is to the left of the photo. |
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Left: A look at the loading face of the reactor. There are 2004 pipe ends protruding from the face, called gun barrels by the operators. Each is capped, and each has its own feed for cooling water. Below: One of our guides gives us a little history on the place, and tries to give us an idea of how a nuclear reactor works. behind him is the loading face, and the elevator gantry used to access and load all of the 2004 tubes. This elevator had a capacity of 6,000 pounds. |
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Left: A look up towards the rafters shows the location of the safety rods. There are 29 of them, and all are lowered into the reactor as a unit, to stop operation. Another set of rods, the control rods, enter the reactor horizontally - there are only nine of them. Below: About half way up the wall are some replacement tubes. From time to time, one or more of the 2004 loading tubes would become warped or damaged, and need to be replaced. This was one of the reasons that this room was so large. The old tube would have to be dismounted, and pulled out, and a new tube installed. |
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Above: The loading face of the B reactor. Left: The housing for the 29 safety rods, which were used to shut the reactor down. Note that the housing is empty, indicating that the rods are either in the reactor, or have been removed for salvage. Below: A look up at the loading face. Note the curtain, which makes this room look even more like the inside of a theater or auditorium. The curtain closed off the reactor face, to help with ventilation. |
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A close up of the loading tubes in the face of the reactor. these were tightly capped, and the braided hoses in the photo were used to force as much as 70000 gallons of cooling water a minute through the reactor core. The nuclear process was silent; but the cooling water made the reactor room a noisy place. The motion of the high speed water made the piping hum and ring. |
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Left: A look at the loading face, showing how the pipes were extruded, and the water hoses connected. Operators called these gun barrels. Below: A look at the platform used for loading the reactor. This was know as the C machine to operators. If you are wondering about the rust, visible on the loading face, there are a couple of things to consider. The reactor face is over 60 years old, and has been out of service and neglected for about 40 of those years. It should also be noted that there was a constant stream of high pressure water circulation through the face of the unit, and that there was probably a certain amount of leakage and spillage, particularly when decapped for loading. |
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Above: A diagram of the fuel fabrication process. Fuel was made at Hanford, and the sites of the fabrication plants are some of the hot spots that needed to be decontaminated during the clean up. Left: A box for loading fuel, as it may have appeared to an operator about to work the loading face. Below: Some mock ups, of what was loaded into the reactor. |
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Above: Some displays show the pipe ends through which the reactor was loaded, as well as some of the graphite bricks, and some dummy slugs. Left: So what do you do, when a radioactive slug gets stuck, on its way out of the back of the reactor? You don't send a man into such a dangerous place. Instead, you send The Blue Monster, a very early robot, complete with camera, light, and remote control. |
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This is "The Pit", the pump room for the cooling water. |
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These are the accumulators. So what do they accumulate? Energy! They are raised up, to act as counter weights for the rods which slow the reactor. The large steel tanks are filled with rocks from the river bed. |
| Back to B Reactor | Forward to Control Room |