Recently, my continued fascination and economic imperative to investigate radioactivit
y reached critical mass with a visit to an actual nuclear reactor. Sure it was only a ‘research’ reactor, and not a mega-nuclear power plant, but it was the most irradiation I had been exposed to thus far. The main thing to remember when you go to a nuclear reactor is to keep your cool. And I was calm like a bomb.
Things I learned. Security is tight. Perhaps an understatement, but in terms of security going in and in terms of detecting hazardous materials going out things are tracked every step of the way. We were sniffed, scanned, scoped and searched at every checkpoint along the way.
Things you can’t do in a nuclear reactor: drink. And I don’t mean, swigging vodka from your thermos Chernobyl style. I mean, once in the main building you can’t have a drink of anything, water, pop, or any liquid. Also-No lozenges. No cough drops. And the armed member of our entourage was on point about this. (“No Touching!”)
Why? Probably because if you ingest any contaminated materials, ie radioactive particles, you could unleash one of the three forms of radiation (I think beta particles) which aren’t too hazardous outside your skin, but inside your body bounce around your organs like a pinball on full tilt. (“Now you’ve done it! The mamoushka!” Addams Family pinball anyone? Anyone?)
The inside, well, there’s not much to see really on the reactor floor. It seemed like any other industrial environment, giant machinery, computers, dials, cooling equipment, and people flitting about just doing their jobs, except of course, that their jobs involved observing and transporting radioactive materials.
It was unreal in a way, to consider that I was probably about 20 feet of solid concrete away from fission. And yet there was something else going on. Despite the incredible power of the forces being harnessed; the delicate balance of extreme risk and longevity of waste materials; and the vast mythology of popular anxiety and fear built around nuclear power and radiation; there was something curiously mundane about the experience. Watching the staff of the building, they were attentive, sure, but also slightly bored; attuned to their tasks, and yet, still just doing their jobs.
There must be thousands of people who work in Nuclear reactors across the country, around the world, for whom nuclear power is a living. And it’s very real. And it’s involves science, and security, and check-points and engineering, and an altogether, no bullshit, serious manner. And yet, it’s also just something that happens.
I just finished reading the first volume of the essential Spider-man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. And for Stan the man in the early sixties, radiation was the jumping point for every one of his creations: Gamma explosions that bombard nuclear scientists; young geeks bitten by irradiated animals; cosmic rays blasting astronauts; not to mention his children of the atom. Half his villains have their origins in nuclear energy as well. It was a fantastic touchpoint for imagination, a sixties launchpad not for paranoia; but for wondrous and tragic side-effects. His characters’ lot in life, for good or for ill all stemmed from radiation. Weird science and sci-fi is a route to Marvel Comics, and their hyperbolic, metaphorical, melodramatic adventures.
And for me, pulling the veil back on it, learning about how it actually works, seeing its operation first hand, has shown me something. The real underwhelms. Even at its most extreme, in its capacity for something wondrous; strange and dangerous miracles of nature, we capture and use for good and ill all over the world, everyday, run by people who at the end of the day, toss out their irradiated work smocks and pick up some groceries on the way home. Not that Stan Lee underestimated the quotidian, he practically invented it with the day-to-day troubles of Peter Parker.
But perhaps the fantastic power found in the world through science and nature that fascinates and terrifies is also at the very human, very dull, very alright, still.
*****
Just found this on the way out–for more than you’d ever want to know about nuclear reactors, why not follow this handy travel guide? Joseph Gonyeau’s Nuclear Tourist takes you everywhere you want to go, and also supplied the image of the Candu fuel bundle above.
