Godiva device
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The Lady Godiva device was an unshielded pulsed nuclear reactor originally situated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was one of a number of criticality devices with
Experimenters produced bursts of gamma rays and neutrons by assembling Godiva I's three parts and dropping a burst rod through the center. This image shows it in the safe, scrammed, state.
A cylindrical wire cage encloses the spherical uranium mass at the top of this image of Godiva II.
Scram
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A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor effected by terminating the fission reaction. It is also the name that is given to the manually operated kill switch that initiates the s
Godiva device
…stack. On 18 April 1952, due to a miscalculation, Jemima was assembled with too many disks; this caused an excursion of 1.5 × 1016 fissions—an automatic scram—but no damage. On 3 February 1954 and 12 February 1957, accidental criticality excursions occurred, causing damage to the device but only insignificant…
SCRAM button at the Experimental Breeder Reactor I in Idaho. Sometimes the switch will have a flip cover to prevent inadvertent operation.
Norman Hilberry (left) and Leó Szilárd at Stagg Field, site of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain-reaction
SCRAM button in the control room of the NS Savannah