Eighteen years after it ceased operating, the University of Washington’s nuclear reactor is finally being dismantled, in a six-month, $4-million procedure designed to protect surrounding areas from exposure to hazardous materials, The Seattle Times reported.
The reactor, which was built in 1959 for training and research, not energy generation, is among those at American universities that have gradually been closed as nuclear-power plants stopped being built, and the need for nuclear engineers waned, in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident. Meanwhile, many universities had trouble finding enough nuclear researchers interested in using their reactors for experiments (The Chronicle, November 2, 2001).
