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I see a lot of people claiming this sort of thing was “common” (JASON at the Royal Naval College London, MIT’s MITR-II, CROCUS at EPL) but there is a huge difference between these things. Kodak’s CFX was a small device the size of a refrigerator; it is a neutron source and not a reactor. CROCUS is a reactor, but also small (100W thermal) and JASON, while larger, is also low power (10 kW.) MITR-II on the other hand is nearly one thousand times larger at 6 MW thermal.

There are only three civilian reactors >1MW in the US: at MIT, UC Davis, and the University of Missouri. You could also count the RINSC MTR, which is owned and operated by the Rhode Island state Atomic Energy Commission but located on the University of Rhode Island campus and collaborates closely with the university. Similarly, there are only two >1MW in Western Europe (TU Delft and TU München.)

If this sort of thing interests you, I can recommend reading about the history of the TRIGA. Freeman Dyson and Edward Teller designed it as a reactor “safe even in the hands of a young graduate student” and the US government sent them around the world as part of Atoms for Peace.





UMass Lowell has a 1MW research reactor as well.



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