Tritium leak at US reactor sparks crisis for neutron source users

摘要

[WASHINGTON] Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Long Island, New York, faces a year-long closure of one of its main research facilities — as well as a desperate battle to regain public confidence — after the discovery of major leaks of tritiumin ground water near its High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR). The closure of the reactor has left hundreds of chemists, structural biologists, condensed-matter physicists and materials scientists scrambling for 'beam time" at other neutron sources in the United States and Europe, most already oversubscribed.