I have decided to attend various events around the 75th anniversary of Chicago Pile-1 and will therefore be in Hyde Park for about 48 hours, from late afternoon Thursday 30 November to late afternoon Saturday 2 December. As of now, the one known gathering is lunch at Valois, 1518 E 53rd (Harper Court, just west of Lake Park and the Metra Electric tracks), at 1 PM on Saturday.
Others are possible, however. I will be at the physics colloquium on Thursday afternoon in Kersten (SW corner of 57th & Ellis) and was thinking vaguely of pizza at Giordano’s (on Blackstone just south of 53rd) afterward, which means 6-ish. I expect to spend much of both Friday and Saturday mornings prowling the bookstores on 57th, and should also be free after around 7 Friday evening, when what seems to be the main event wraps up at Mandel Hall.
In general, respond in comments, and graze (Midwesterners don’t surf) around here for official events.
Have your people send a text to my people* at 816 943 0873 to start the planning process.
*I don’t actually have people, but I’ll get an e-mail and should start synching up within a few hours.
Chicago Boyz endorses this message.
Midwesterners do, in fact, surf
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-11-27/news/chi-surf-culture-zones-27-nov27_1_vince-deur-third-coast-surf-shop-great-lakes-surfer
Saturday at Valois means … short ribs.
The physics and engineering of the earliest nuclear reactors is far removed from current commercial power reactors. Especially interesting is the design of the Hanford-B production reactor. It is essentially the Chicago pile extrapolated a hundred-fold or more. It was the source for the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb.
Hanford-B uses the same lattice of graphite and natural uranium metal slugs but the flux is so high that the fuel slugs needed cooling water while the graphite used forced air.
It was proceeded by the Chicago pile then a slightly larger version at Oak Ridge. The design went from less than one Watt of power at Chicago to 250,000,000 Watts (250 MWth) at Hanford in about 2 years. A new commercial reactor core today is typically 4,000 MWth.
I remember visiting University of Chicago as a prospective student in 1966 and went looking for the site to no luck.