Nuclear reactors of the world: vintage wall charts

Image: Wylfa Magnox, Wylfa, Anglesey, UK. Wall chart insert, Nuclear Engineering, 1965

Now seems like a good week to revisit this set of 105 reactor wall charts, uploaded by the University of New Mexico. The dates next to each chart relate to the issue of Nuclear Engineering International magazine in which they first appeared. Ronald Knief, a nuclear engineer from Sandia National Laboratories, assembled the image collection.

More about the images, and links to the complete set, here at Bibliodyssey. Here's the direct Flickr set link.

(via BB Submitterator, thanks cinemajay)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Patrick Austin

I can’t believe these are actually large enough to print.

My office at work is going to really creep some coworkers out.
Lobster

Not Pictured: OH SHI-
Anonymous

Too bad they don’t have Agesta, the underground nuclear reactor the Sweedes used for plutonium production in support of their later canceled weapons program.
JayByrd

All I can think of is Rube Goldberg.
chixon

Are they trying to make it look like an amusement park? Because the first thing I thought was, “Ooh, look at all the slides!”
artaxerxes

Damn. Some of those are beautiful. And they look like AWESOME amusement parksâ€¦Â minus the radioactive core and all that bit. They look like dream kids’ forts for adults. The climbing, the potential slides, the rail-jumping, the Parkour. Supa-dupa.

A different aspect is what’s suggested by some of the logo treatments. They’re the kind of thing one might work up for a band name. Check out the post-Zardoz SYSTEM-80.
Ugly Canuck

Now this is the neato kind of fact and science based reporting which I’ve come to expect from Boing Boing over the years.

These rectors will by and large be regarded like dinosaurs in the future, both for the inherent safety (or not) of their designs:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/china-to-build-nuclear-plant-using-fourth-generation-technology-in-april.html

..and for their very size:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-22/meltdown-or-not-future-for-nuclear-seen-in-diminutive-reactors.html

My point being: we (everybody, that is) need to train more nuclear engineers.
Ugly Canuck

Bah! – “reactors” for “rectors”, in the above.

And don’t get me started about rectors!
Anonymous

Here is a torrent of all the posters in PDF format

http://btjunkie.org/torrent/106-Nuclear-Power-Plant-Wall-Diagrams/4239d62b02a63f7f85ce9b88e4b29c0aca1881dfcf4d
Anonymous

Definitely hitting the Kinkos to run off a copy of that System80 this week.
cinemajay

It’s funny how the news sort of glosses over the reactors with this simplistic viewpoint “oh, they’re dumping water on them now” like there’s a straight funnel into the hot mess in the center.

These give a better idea of what’s involved.

Plus, who doesn’t love hot reactor pr0n?
MooseDesign

That Wylfa one is wild! Love the robo fueling machine…
Sork

Dungeness B & Dragon