History of the Rocky Flats Critical Mass Laboratory

摘要

The Rocky Flats Critical Mass Laboratory(CML) is the youngest of the five major laboratories –Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Livermore, Hanford, and RockyFlats. The Rocky Flats facility fulfilled the dream ofClarence Lee Schuske who, sadly, was killed in anautomobile accident in the mid-1970s. The building wasconstructed in 1964 and commissioned to perform nuclearcriticality experiments on January 28th the following year.The CML at the Rocky Flats Plant (RFP) was housed atthe south end of Building 86 (later renumbered 886). Itwas a single-level facility consisting of the AssemblyRoom (Room 101 wherein all critical experiments wereperformed), two material storage rooms (Room 102 forsolid fissile material and Room 103 housing the uranylnitrate solution), a Control Room, a small machine shopassociated with experiments, and a number of offices.These offices housed CML staff as well as technicalpersonnel charged with the responsibility of ensuringnuclear criticality safety throughout the entire plant.