B Reactor can take a tour of the reactor by advance reservation. The reactor was designed and built by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company based on experimental designs tested by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, and tests from the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was designed to operate at 250 megawatts (thermal). The reactor occupies a footprint of (about and is tall, occupying a volume of . The reactor core itself consisted of a graphite box measuring occupying a volume of and weighing . It was penetrated horizontally through its entire length by
TOPAZ nuclear reactor TOPAZ nuclear reactor The TOPAZ nuclear reactor is a lightweight nuclear reactor developed for long term space use by the Soviet Union. Cooled by liquid metal, it uses a high-temperature moderator containing hydrogen and highly enriched fuel and produces electricity using a thermionic converter. In initial discussions, it was unclear that TOPAZ and the somewhat similar YENISEI reactors were different systems, and when the existence of the two Russian thermionic reactors became generally known, US personnel began referring to TOPAZ as TOPAZ-I and YENISEI as TOPAZ-II. The first thermionic converter reactors were discussed by scientists at the Los Alamos Scientific