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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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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Throwaway1231200001 t1_jae31jl wrote

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

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jakejanobs t1_jaelcoh wrote

Replying to GEARHEADGus (#2,121,774)

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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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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