STATE COLLEGE — Just 19 feet below the surface of a mid-sized pool in the middle of Penn State University, a reactor running at 460 degrees Celsius was throwing radioactive particles at pieces of metal in a closed tube.

Above, a stream of visitors, including families with children strapped to their chests, peered over the pool's edge at the glowing blue reactor. The water provided the safety buffer they needed.

The Breazeale reactor at Penn State this week celebrated 60 years of operation under license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is part of a large classroom that serves not only several hundred students and researchers each year but about 3,000 annual visitors who might not totally understand the power of the atom.

“One of our fundamental missions is educating people that nuclear radiation is not nearly as dangerous as what they might believe,” said Mark Trump, associate director for operations at the Radiation Science and Engineering Center, which houses the reactor midway between Old Main and the Bryce Jordan Center, a multi-purpose arena.

“It's so safe, students can work here in the middle of a densely populated campus and families can visit.”

That's not to say important work isn't happening at the oldest continuously running research reactor in the country. As researchers conduct experiments involving tracers for medical testing, gamma rays for equipment sterilization and identification of elements in tree rings, the next generation of nuclear engineers learns how to operate a working reactor.

The Breazeale reactor — commissioned when Dwight Eisenhower was president and his brother Milton led Penn State — does not generate electricity, but it serves the power industry through job training and research.

“Without the key in the console, you can't manipulate the controls. If the key is in the console, there has to be a licensed operator at the control,” said Justin Monito, 21, of Ebensburg as he showed visitors the reactor's control room, a mix of analog gauges and digital monitors.

A nuclear engineering major and one of eight students who work alongside 10 staffers at the reactor, Monito has taken the exam for his senior reactor operator license from the NRC.

“The majority of our students go into the nuclear industry. They leave here with real, hands-on experience,” said Kenan Unlu, director of the center that supports 24 courses in eight Penn State colleges, including a new nuclear security program.

When he graduates, Monito will enter a favorable job market. The Nuclear Energy Institute last year estimated the industry will hire 20,000 plant workers in the next five years to replace a retiring generation of operators hired amid regulatory changes prompted by the Three Mile Island accident. An equipment malfunction and worker error led to a partial meltdown in a reactor at the plant near Harrisburg in March 1979.

“Programs such as the one at Penn State are really important to us,” said Jennifer Young, spokeswoman for Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., which operates nuclear plants such as the Beaver Valley station in Shippingport.

Of the 2,500 employees in its nuclear fleet, 48 percent are older than 51, and about half the jobs require engineering degrees. FirstEnergy is working with Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh's engineering school to groom potential candidates.

“That wave of demand for engineers has been communicated to students,” Trump said, noting the Penn State program increased to more than 100 students per class from single digits.

Despite a shortage of nuclear power plant construction, interest in the industry and related jobs remains high. The security program begun in 2010 is teaching graduate students about portable equipment used to detect radioactive material, especially when it is carried by those looking to use it for harm.

“This is what they will take into Iran to find minute evidence of something that wasn't supposed to be there at all,” Trump said.

Such programs have prompted continued investment at Breazeale, which has received $12.5 million in upgrades in the past seven years.

In a classroom filled with computers downstairs from the pool, Monito showed visitors the dosimeters he wears during a discussion of safe background radiation. The badge around his neck and rings on one finger on each hand are read quarterly to monitor his level of radiation exposure.

“It should be the same every time because I know what I'm working with,” he said.

The environment inside the building, where he wears the monitors, is controlled and safe.

“If I wore one while lying on the Old Main lawn in the sun, the reading would be a lot higher,” he said to a round of laughter from the visitors. On tours such as this, the students are the teachers.

“The most important message for the general public is for them to understand nuclear work can be done in a safe environment,” Unlu said.

David Conti is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-388-5802 or dconti@tribweb.com.

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