Etcheverry Hall houses the Departments of Mechanical, Industrial, and

Nuclear Engineering Nuclear engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the application of breaking down atomic nuclei ( fission) or of combining atomic nuclei (fusion), or with the application of other sub-atomic processes based on the principles of n ...

of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Etcheverry Hall is named after Bernard A. Etcheverry, professor of irrigation and drainage from 1915–51, who later served as chair of the Department of Irrigation and Drainage from 1923–51. Built in 1964, it is located on the north side of Hearst Avenue, across the street from the main

campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

. The basement of Etcheverry Hall housed the

Berkeley Research Reactor The Berkeley Research Reactor was an active research nuclear reactor housed in the basement of the Etcheverry Hall in University of California, Berkeley. The reactor became critical on 10 August 1966 and was decommissioned in 1987. Description Th ...

between 1966 and 1987.

Bernard A. Etcheverry

Bernard Alfred Etcheverry was born in San Diego, California on June 30, 1881 and graduated from UC Berkeley in 1902. He married Helen Hanson on August 6, 1903 and together they had two sons, Bernard Earle and Alfred Starr. His first teaching appointment was to the Department of Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley, where he taught during the 1902–03 academic year. After that, he taught physics and civil engineering at the University of Nevada for two years before returning to Berkeley for the remainder of his career, from 1905 until his retirement in 1951. In addition to teaching, he served as an engineer for the construction of the Hearst Greek Theatre on the Berkeley campus. He moved into a new home in

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

in 1953. Professor Etcheverry died on October 26, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut.

Renovations

The basement reactor room currently houses large experiments for the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Berkeley, including the Compact Integral Effects Test (CIET), which studies the thermal hydraulics, design, and operation of fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactors. The V&A Café opened on the third floor of Etcheverry Hall in June 2017. This followed a series of renovations begun in 2016 planned to take place over a 10-year period to modernize the building.

References

External links

Contract for Fuel Elements for Nuclear Reactor, Berkeley
(''Minutes of The Regents of the University of California meeting of March 26, 1965'')
Etcheverry Hall on the UC Berkeley campus map

{{coord, 37.875663, -122.25928, display=title University of California, Berkeley buildings Nuclear reactors