Though the majority of Reed’s 40 undergrad operators are physical science majors, there are also English, history, economics, and psychology majors. Likewise, the reactor operator training program is open to all students. The reactor does not tie directly into any particular area of study-there is no nuclear engineering department at Reed-but any student at the college is welcome to use it for experiments. Not only that, but she was “pretty obsessed with it,” she says: “I just thought it was a great idea that I could operate a reactor and not have to be a science major.” Unlike Novakoski, Oxley knew about the Reed reactor before arriving on campus. By putting them into the reactor and activating certain metals, we could identify the metals and trace the trade routes that the vases went on thousands of years ago.” “We had this one experiment where we had pieces of an ancient vase. It’s ”great for artifacts,” says Margie Oxley, a reactor operator and history major studying ancient China. This can be useful for things like analyzing rock samples and identifying contaminants in an industrial sample, but also has surprisingly broad applications outside the physical sciences. By measuring these gamma rays, an experimenter can identify what elements are in a sample. The elements of the irradiated sample each then emit distinctive gamma rays. It uses a process called Neutron Activation Analysis, in which a sample-liquid, solid, or gas-is placed in the reactor and made radioactive by being bombarded with neutrons. The reactor, established in 1968, is used for research and analysis, both by students at the 1,400-person college and on behalf of outside agencies. As she was told during a tour of the reactor-led by a purple-haired man in a wizard hat-the liberal arts college is home to the only nuclear reactor in the world run by undergraduate operators. Intrigued, Novakoski investigated, and discovered the poster was real and the question legitimate. Three years ago, as Ilana Novakoski was settling into her freshman year on campus at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, she saw “the most bizarre poster I’ve ever seen.” Written on it was a question that made little sense to her: “Do you want to be a nuclear reactor operator?”
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