Anyone know about an old Brown Nuclear research lab behind the Salvation Army on the Seekonk river?

Submitted by GEARHEADGus t3_11efxpu in providence

So i did some digging to try and figure out just what the hell used to be next to the Crook point bridge. I had been told before it was a brown nuclear or medical lab back in the day. I did some digging and found out that Brown owned the property behind the Salvation army, and i was able to find one news article from the 60s that mentions they had a homemade particle accelerator at the facility but then I cant find ANYTHING. Anyone have any insight? Its greatly appreciated.

EDIT:

Link to article https://imgur.com/b2h5heo

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laterbacon t1_jae61e4 wrote

Not sure about Brown, but there's a 60 year old reactor at the URI Bay campus.

http://www.rinsc.ri.gov/

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GEARHEADGus OP t1_jae660n wrote

Appreciate it. I’ll have to post the map when I can, its an old fire insurance map. Definitely in Providence.

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jakejanobs t1_jaelcoh wrote

I had some classes at RINSC years ago, research reactors used to be super common and a lot of universities used to have them, the facility had tons of scientific equipment from other reactors that shut down. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if brown had one too, a particle accelerator would make more sense as the regulatory approval for those is a lot easier. RI’s nuclear science community is super tiny and full of nerds so I’m sure if you contacted them they’d know more about it.

Highly recommend finding a tour of the place sometime if possible, you can see the tiny reactor glow blue, and the building was made on a WWII gun emplacement so the foundation in the basement is really weird

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laterbacon t1_jae87sg wrote

ooh please do. I love mysteries and old maps

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Throwaway1231200001 t1_jae31jl wrote

It's where they grew this regions batch of Super Mutants on a modified FEV strain.

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ynwp t1_jae2nwt wrote

I dunno, but I heard when I was a kid that MIT had something similar in Cambridge. Mini nuclear reactor for research. Maybe they are related somehow?

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ForTheLoveOfAudio t1_jae4wt4 wrote

MIT still has it. So does UMass Lowell.

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papanikolaos t1_jae8m2t wrote

URI does too. 3rd largest research reactor in the country, although not owned by URI. None of them are. Owned by the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission (or something like that.)

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SluggDaddy t1_jaf28tx wrote

Also, just a few miles northeast there was the Shpack Landfill site in Norton and Attleborough Mass, where a landowner allowed people to just dump chemicals and whatever else the municipal waste wouldn’t take. They received nuclear waste and the contamination wasn’t discovered until the 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shpack_Landfill

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