Interesting thread. My wife's grandfather worked as a nuclear engineer at Oak Ridge. My wife's mother grew up as a child in the Oak Ridge community.
This is timely as my wife has two items she had put in the car today to get restored. One is a certificate of appreciation for her grandfather regarding his work with the manhattan project.
The second is a picture of an early reactor itself (which I assume he took). Looks like fuel rods. I asked my wife- she said "The only person who knows that is dead."
He died before I met my wife, but some other family members had met him, and they were quite impressed- Just to share- and this may be previous thanksgiving libations talking- he claimed Anne's grandfather worked on/was assigned what was a miniature DIY nuclear reactor made to power a house. He claimed it was the size of a refrigerator, and went into great detail about it's construction and specifics. I need to go check with that person again ( himself a medical doctor with enough background in physics and such for basic understandings of the reactions- I consider him as "semi" credible witness
), but, I think, Anne's grandfather even used it on occasion, however, as you can imagine, things never quite worked out. That would have been the ultimate "popular mechanics" project!
One thing is for certain though, Anne's grandfather died deathly afraid of radiation. After a career of what he did, he gained such a respect for it, and his overdoseage, that he refused all medical xrays. According to the family member, they really had no idea just how potent things were back then, and even being mindful, were being cavalier.
Sorry for the bad condition of the pics- but like I said- they were in the back of Anne's car to be professionally restored (today). The pic of the reactor is so old, it is a glued backing on the frame and I cannot get it out to re-align it. It is absolutely beautiful in person!
