The tank that holds WSU’s research nuclear reactor will soon be coated with a new, flexible epoxy lining without the reactor ever having to leave its watery home.
The university’s Nuclear Science Center has a unique reactor pool: a relatively large, rectangular concrete-walled tank about 25-feet deep and filled with 65,000 gallons of water. Near the bottom, the glowing blue reactor core rests in a square box. It’s hooked to a bridge on a track so it can be moved to one side of the pool while work is done on the other, keeping it constantly under several feet of protective, highly deionized water.
The work, which started last week at the Dodgen Research Facility on the Pullman campus, should take about five weeks, but it’s the result of a much longer process.
The Center has also expanded lab space, and two WSU faculty, Xiofeng Guo and Liane Moreau, who work in chemistry and materials development, are setting up work there.