Do you still glow?

Or: My experiences working at a nuclear research reactor

My first day at the reactor involved a fire alarm and a contamination alert. A great way to start your ‘career’ in nuclear physics, anyone would agree.

As I made my way through three different gates, each with its own security, it became clear that I wasn’t just entering any type of ordinary office building; it was dangerous territory. I was impressed and happy to see so much security; I remembered watching the Libyans in Back to the Future stealing plutonium from Doc’s Flux Capacitor, and I really didn’t want a scenario like that to unfold here. I wanted the nuclear reactor’s fuel to stay right where it was, submerged in millions of gallons of water, creating that pretty blue glow.

As I spoke to my new colleagues in the offices adjacent to the reactor, a fire alarm went off and we were asked to exit the building and walk into a Northerly direction. A Northerly direction you ask? Why so specific? Also, it worried me knowing we were fenced in by sky-high frameworks on every side, so any direction we went, we wouldn’t get very far anyway.

I asked a colleague closest to me for an explanation. It was because the wind blew south, so nuclear fallout would be blown that way. To say my heart started beating a little faster through sheer terror would be the understatement of the century. Of course it turned out to be a test. But nobody had told me there would be a test and to this day, I think it was because they wanted to witness a nuclear physics virgin completely cave in at the idea of having front row seats at a nuclear disaster.

And I hadn’t even been inside the reactor yet.

Needless to say, after this experience I wasn’t jumping with joy to go in. But I had to. I had an appointment to speak to the two men who dealt with the production of radioisotopes.
The guys were so friendly, I soon forgot I had just been faced with the dreadful prospect of annihilation by acute radiation poisoning, and as they led the way to the room where I could dress up in overalls to go inside I actually started to feel excitement at going into a nuclear reactor for the first time in my life. The cuffs of my bell-bottom trousers (no, it wasn’t the 70s, just a revival) were the only things sticking from the too big overalls I had on while I stood in the lock chamber. Inside, I was shown the hot cells and was then led up to the reactor vessel and I was finally able to see what I had only seen in pictures, the blue glow known as Cerenkov radiation. I was mesmerized by the glow, and tried not to think of how easy it would be to fall into it or how only water kept me from being struck down by a lethal dose of radiation.

OK, I hear you, stop being so melodramatic about your proximity to uranium.
As I was walking along the pool, looking into it, and listening to my new colleague explaining their process of producing radioisotopes that would later be used in nuclear medicine and imaging, I suddenly became aware of one guy looking at us and trying to get our attention.
“The poolside is contaminated”, he said, “and your trouser cuffs are grazing the floor”. I looked down in horror, expecting to find green-blue residue on my trousers, creeping up my leg. No such thing, but I was kindly asked to go back out to the changing rooms and get a radiation testing. As I hurried back out of the reactor with my colleague in tow, my mind started playing evil tricks on me, offering me scenarios where I would be stuck in the reactor for years, being displayed behind radiation-proof glass as a freak of nature. The Geiger counter went off once. It went off twice. It went off three times. Try again, they said. After six times I came out as safe to hit the streets again. So I did.

Thanking my co-worker, I walked outside, breathed in the fresh sea air and vowed to myself never to go inside that dangerous place ever again.

Physics

Life takes funny turns. I think if I met my secondary school physics teacher today and told him that almost 20 years after ditching physics as an A-level subject, I am now working for an institute for subatomic physics, he would either stare at me hard and tell me I’m a liar or run away laughing. Granted, I was never that bad at physics (it was the chemistry teacher that gave me nightmares), but it never came to mind to find out more about the subject. That is until I started my university science communications internship at a nuclear research reactor. I became fascinated with physics. I wanted to know everything there was to know about atoms and their nuclei and that funny blue glow I could see deep in the reactor’s core.

But it wasn’t enough. I craved a physics subject that left me reeling, that left me completely in limbo as to whether I understood it or not.
Quantum Mechanics.

Ever since working for an institute for atomic and molecular physics I have been somewhat of a QM groupie. I mean, who doesn’t like the idea of a cat that can be simultaneously dead and alive as long as it is not observed*? The whole notion of quantum mechanics is mind-boggling and to be honest a little idiotic, but strangely fascinating as well. But more about that in a later blog post.
Right now I am submerged in all kinds of subatomic particles whilst working for a research institute that focuses on (astro)particle physics, so a whole new physics world is opening up for me. Dark matter, antimatter, the Big Bang, cosmic rays? Bring it on!

Knowing everything there is to know about physics? I don't think I ever will. But I am planning to get as far as I can.

*Read about Schrodinger's cat on Wikipedia

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