More Hall Annex
The More Hall Annex, formerly the Nuclear Reactor Building, was a building on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. The reactor was inaugurated in 1961 and shut down in 1988, operating at a peak of 100 kilowatts thermal, and was officially decommissioned in 2007. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, after a campaign led by an architecture student in response to the proposed demolition of the building. The university demolished the building in July 2016 and replaced it with a new computer science building that opened in February 2019.
About More Hall Annex in brief
The More Hall Annex, formerly the Nuclear Reactor Building, was a building on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. The reactor was inaugurated in 1961 and shut down in 1988, operating at a peak of 100 kilowatts thermal, and was officially decommissioned in 2007. The building was designed by a consortium of UW faculty members, known as The Architect Artist Group, with input from nuclear engineering department chair Albert L. Babb. The large glass walls enabled public viewing of the reactor room’s interior, showcasing the activity inside. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, after a campaign led by an architecture student in response to the proposed demolition of the building. The university demolished the building in July 2016 and replaced it with a new computer science building that opened in February 2019. The Nuclear Engineering department used training reactors at Bagley Hall and later proposed that the university acquire a nuclear reactor to be installed on campus. In 1957, the AEC approved USD 100,000 in funding for the university to install a permanent nuclear reactor. The proposed 10 kW reactor was approved by the university’s Board of Regents in April 1959, to be housed in a two-story reinforced concrete building with offices, workshops, a control room, and class and seminar spaces.
It occupied a footprint of 69 ft 8in from north to south and 76 ft from east to west, with a total of 7,595 square feet of interior space. The first floor housed the reactor, laboratory, crystal spectrometer, counting room with a nuclear densometer, classrooms, restrooms, and offices. The second floor contained the control room,. an observatory, and a lecture room overlooking the reactor; it was open to the outdoor plaza on three sides, with large glass windows allowing for public observation of experiments. During its 27-year lifespan, the reactor operated for the equivalent of 140 days, running for some days at half power and for as little as 10 minutes. The structure’s roof rested on a series of perpendicular beams that also supported a three-ton crane used to lift the reactor shield between experiments. The AEC granted an operating license for the reactor to the university in April 1961, and the reactor began operating with a self-sustained nuclear reaction on April 10, 1962. During the 1962 World Fair, the world’s first nuclear reactor achieved criticality at Chicago Pile-1.
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