University of Massachusetts Lowell Radiation Laboratory

The Radiation Laboratory at UMass Lowell serves the Department of Applied Physics among others. The laboratory contains a 1 MW pool-type nuclear research reactor (UMLRR) that has been operating since 1974, a 300 kCi Co-60 gamma ray source, and a 5.5 MV Van de Graff accelerator.

Reactor

First startup was January 2, 1975.^[1] A budget for the reactor is not provided from the university or from the state; funding comes from grants and the United States Department of Energy.^{[2] [3]}

Availability of information

Unlike the vast majority of university research reactors, the UMass Lowell research reactor has no official homepage. In the ABC 2005 Primetime special "Radioactive Roadtrip," it was reported that staff did not respond to emails and a tour could not be arranged but that an archived version of a virtual tour could be found online. This virtual tour, however, only contained 2 (about 300 pixel wide) small pictures and was pulled from the website in 2002.^[4] This is in contrast to other reactors, many of which have large clear pictures of the reactor pool and blue glow of the core on their homepages that are more detailed than what was ever on the Radiation Laboratory site.

In the ABC report, it was also reported that an officer of the Lowell (city) police force was not aware that the reactor was still in operation at all.^[5]

Conversion to LEU

The UMass Lowell reactor has been one of the many research reactors to make the conversion from high-enriched Uranium to low-enriched Uranium as a part of anti-terrorism security measures.^[6] The used HEU fuel was reportedly shipped to the Savannah River Site. The original shipping date was June 2002 but had been postponed many times. As of present day the shipments have been made and the reactor is in operation with LEU.

References

External links

• Applied Physics Departmental Site
• ABC's Radioactive Roadtrip Security Review