Last week we had the trip to the MIT nuclear reactor lab. Walking over I couldn’t believe I drove by so many times and never knew what was right there. I think that is the biggest shock I had from the entire trip. Once we got there, we had signed in and I was impressed to see how tight security is there. It was good to see how seriously they take it.
The first part of the trip was a power point presentation that was delivered by Tom. He did a wonderful job. it was very thorough, so thorough that the time went over a bit. Our class also had plenty questions to ask which were all appropriately answered by Tom. The presentation did go a little long which made me, at least, a little anxious to see what it looked like in there since we talked about it in the power point presentation.
The next part of the trip was the tour which was kind of exciting. The tour was given by Sarah who, if I’m not mistaken, is the superintendent and was described as the “smartest person to give the tour”. She was very very through with entire tour and always checked in and asked if we had any questions. We walked through the entire lab including a “bird’s eye-view” from the top and going down to the basement.
Things I found amusing in the tour:
- how often radiation is tracked, appropriately so. They had “thermometers” that measured it throughout the lab, checking our hands and feet twice as we left the tour, and the instrument that was handed to us in the beginning of the entire trip.
- how big the lab really is!
- how involved MIT students can be with this lab.
- I was really interested on the chemo that was talked about in class and how MIT is involved in such interesting project.
I was also intrigued by the cancer treatment. I think its great that they help provide the radiated seeds to hospitals. I would be interested to learn more about it!