Behind Door Number Three …

ByABC News
October 12, 2005, 7:37 PM

Oct. 12, 2005 — -- I had fully expected to hear the familiar "click" of metal door frame against bolt lock. It was the same sound I'd heard twice before when I'd tugged on other securely locked doors on the front of the Merrill Engineering Building, home to the University of Utah's research reactor. After all, it was 12:30 in the morning.

But this time, the only sounds when I pulled on the handle were my shallow, nervous breaths.

The third door, only a long hallway and a short walk away from the nuclear reactor room, was open.

The University of Utah, the third stop for our team, was our first opportunity to see an actual reactor up close. In the week before we were scheduled to arrive in Salt Lake City, I called the school and spoke with Dr. Melinda Krahenbuhl, director of the Center for Excellence in Nuclear Technology, Engineering and Research (CENTER).

By Googling "University of Utah," "tour" and "reactor," I had already found a page on the university's Nuclear Engineering Program Web site that welcomed prospective engineering graduate students to "Take a Tour of the Reactor" and listed a phone number to call. So I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to arrange a tour of the reactor facility. Sure enough, after giving my name and Michelle's, and saying that I had an "interest in nuclear engineering," we were booked for a tour the following Friday afternoon.

When we arrived on campus on the day of the tour, we knew from research found on the Web -- particularly the school's Web site and Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents -- that we'd find the reactor in the basement of the Merrill Engineering Building.

Once there, we were greeted by Krahenbuhl, the amiable and knowledgeable director of CENTER.

She led us into the CENTER office, where there is a door leading to a computer lab, then the control room and finally into the room that contains the reactor.

Inside the control room, Krahenbuhl gave Michelle a sheet, where she had to write both our names and addresses. We checked out the control panel, with its blinking lights, as well as a bookshelf filled with volumes of instruction manuals that anyone with aspirations to operate the reactor is required to peruse first.