The Réacteur Universitaire de Strasbourg (RUS) was a 100 kW

thermal A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...

Argonaut-class reactor built at the University Louis-Pasteur, located in the commune of Schiltigheim near Strasbourg. RUS went

critical Critical or Critically may refer to: *Critical, or critical but stable, medical states **Critical, or intensive care medicine * Critical juncture, a discontinuous change studied in the social sciences. *Critical Software, a company specializing i ...

on 22 November 1966 and ended operations on 31 May 1995. Its decommissioning was finalized in 2009.''Réacteur universitaire de Strasbourg''
– ASN, 5 juillet 2013

History

The design of university training reactor RUS was based on the Argonaut research reactor developed by the

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...

in the mid-1950s, in the

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. A second Argonaut-class reactor, the Ulysse reactor, was already in operation in France at the Saclay research centre of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. The University Reactor of Strasbourg was the Basic Nuclear Installation (BNI) No. 44. The reactor core consisted of an internal

graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

neutron reflector A neutron reflector is any material that reflects neutrons. This refers to elastic scattering rather than to a specular reflection. The material may be graphite, beryllium, steel, tungsten carbide, gold, or other materials. A neutron reflect ...

surrounded by a ring of

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-type

nuclear fuel Nuclear fuel refers to any substance, typically fissile material, which is used by nuclear power stations or other atomic nucleus, nuclear devices to generate energy. Oxide fuel For fission reactors, the fuel (typically based on uranium) is ...

elements with an average ²³⁵U enrichment of 92.5% and an external graphite neutron reflector. The

highly enriched uranium Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238 ...

(93%) was supplied by the United States. The reactor was primarily a research instrument for conducting experimental irradiations, activation-based analysis of nuclear chemistry, solid-state physics, biology and the production of short-lived radioisotopes. A variety of cavities were available, including a 7.3-metre "biological cavity", to perform those experiments. Pneumatic conveyor systems make short irradiations possible to immediately study the irradiated materials in the laboratories adjacent to the reactor hall. The final shutdown of the RUS reactor was decided in February 2006. The RUS reactor was dismantled from August 2006 to December 2008. The final decommissioning of INB No. 44 was pronounced in October 2012.

References

{{Coord, 48, 36, 0, N, 7, 42, 0, E, type:landmark_scale:10000_region:FR, display=title University of Strasbourg Argonaut class reactor Defunct nuclear reactors Science and technology in France