Career Autobiography Part 7 - The Nuclear Research Reactor

Photograph of a TRIGA reactor. A clever design that has the ability to be 'pulsed'.  This reactor can  survive a Chernobyl-type positive reactivity insertion without catastrophic failure.  In fact, a TRIGA reactor can be pulsed many such times.

Part 6 of the Career Autobiography is here.

My first job after leaving the US Navy was with General Atomics, where I received Nuclear Reactor Operator license for two small research reactors. One was rated at 1.5 MW thermal and the other was 250KW thermal. I was exposed to a lot of fascinating research (as well as some long-lived isotopes, hahaha) at GA.

General Atomics also owns a small Tokamak fusion reactor, an electron linear accelerator, a hot cell for examining irradiated nuclear fuel, isotope separation, and they were doing some interesting star wars research.

They were developing lasers, space power systems, and particle beams.  Lots of wonderful James Bond stuff!   My trivial part in the star wars debacle was the testing of in-core thermionic converters for orbital power plants. These orbital nuclear reactors would then supply power to attached pulsed lasers and rail guns to disable incoming nuclear warheads from the USSR.

Of minor interest is that there was a piggyback program running alongside the thermionic DOE sponsored one. This one was a commercial product: Topaz irradiation. Topaz color enhancement is also the reason GA purchased and installed the electron accelerator. There's much more fascinating stuff to post about my time at General Atomics, and those posts are linked below:

TRIGA reactor design
Thermionic Cells and Topaz Irradiation
Neutron Radiography
Neutron Activation Analysis

Part 8 of the Career Autobiography is here.