The Penn State Breazeale Reactor is the longest
continuously operating reactor in the United States.
It was established in 1955 right after
President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace project, which he initiated in 1953.
Since the reactor began, it really has been a training resource
for education for nuclear scientists and non-nuclear
scientists. In 1956, Penn State was one of
two international schools to teach about nuclear
science and engineering applications.
If we are looking at the new trend in education
of increasing the hands on experience of students,
getting them involved in actual experiments,
let them see the details of how the technology
interfaces with application, then there is
really no alternative to having an actual
physical capability as we have at Penn State
in terms of the nuclear reactor.
There are very few universities that have an operating reactor and I get to sit 20 feet from it every
day and perform experiments on it whenever
I want. The mission of the radiation science
and engineering center is to operate the Breazeale
Nuclear Reactor and all our facilities safely
and securely to help research and education.
Currently we operate the facility about 50 hours a week. I've got 16 licensed student
and staff operators,
and we operate about 600 megawatt hours each year. Another benefit
of being an intern at the rector is that it
creates a culture for us to be safe, efficient,
trained, and honest.
We are allowed to make mistakes as students and we learn from them.
That helps us grow into young professionals.
Safety is always a primary concern when you're
running a facility like this. We all take
it very seriously. It's important that we
do things right and it's important to me that
the NRC does stay on top of these things.
It gives me confidence that our reactors across
the country are actually being operated safely.
Several students who have come through to
the Penn State nuclear engineering program
because of their field trips or the teachers
that they had took one of our teacher workshops
that they found an interest in nuclear engineering
and have pursued it. I got interested in nuclear
engineering while taking a chemistry course
at Penn State and they gave a tour at Breazeale
Nuclear Reactor. We educate about 3000 people
a year, from elementary age students up through
high school and college and then we also do
professional development workshops for nuclear
professionals and energy professionals.
Penn State conducted this nuclear concepts program
from the late 1960s to the early 90s.
The program grew from just Pennsylvania teachers
who then formed what's called the Pennsylvania
Nuclear Science Teachers Association expanded
to the nation, the American Nuclear Science Teachers Association.
When I was a high school
junior, I took physics and my physics teacher
had been trained in some of the nuclear education
programs that Candace Davison runs here at
the reactor and we took a field trip here,
to see the Penn State Breazeale Reactor.
Penn State is broad in terms of its educational
base, we have a lot of experts that touch
upon almost all areas. But we are particularly
strong in basic sciences, physics, and engineering
disciplines, and so it's fitting that we have
a reactor here on campus. We have two new
initiatives in terms of the education. One
is the nuclear security education laboratory,
the other one is the radiochemistry teaching
and research laboratory. Radiation is everywhere,
there is lots of naturally occurring radioactivity
and it's involved in a lot of natural processes.
Having the reactor is actually a really great
thing for some of the radiochemistry classes
we have here. We can bring students in to
show them the reactor, so they can see a working
reactor in person. The other thing is that
for our radiochemistry class, we can actually
make a number of the isotopes that the students
would use in class. One of our recent projects
was the creation of some copper 64 and copper
67 isotopes. They are medical isotopes that
are in high demand for research, but in short
supply. And we were able to produce those
via a different route than normal, but in
our reactor. The Radiation Science and Engineering
Center is home of the nuclear security education
program. And we created a state-of-the-art
nuclear security education lab. This nuclear
security education program actually jointly
developed with MIT and Texas A&M, and was
supported by the Department of Energy and
the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Nuclear security is one of the critical areas
especially after 9/11. Currently, the reactor's
working with about 15 different government
and industry agencies to provide services
that support the nation. Recently, we radiographed
a portion of the space suite life support
pack that astronauts wear when the leave the
space station. It was fascinating for both
us, the staff, and the students. Some of the
research that I'm involved with in the gamma
radiation includes helping the honey bee from
colony collapse disorder, we sterilize the
pollen that they're using for that. We've
also shown that we can reduce pesticides levels
with the gamma rays, and we're also doing
some interesting Cosmo-chemistry research
with NASA. We are one of these unique institutions
that are about to provide undergraduate students
with a real-life experience in nuclear engineering.
This is really quite rare. Everyone at the
reactor is a giant family and it's very easy
to accomplish research when everyone is working
as well together as they are here.
